THAT Mom

Today I was THAT out of nowhere, ridiculous MOM.

I confronted a situation that bothered me about how a child treated my child. I did that.

Long story short: things turned out fine. I talked with the parent after talking with a person whom I thought was the parent and turned out not to be the parent about the situation. The parent responded with GRACE and kindness and in a way I will admire until I'm put into the grave. I want to be just the same as that parent.

Was the situation a horrible, huge...a 'must confront' kind of thing? Well, no. It wasn't. It's just that when I first noticed the situation and asked the teacher what she thought...her response was to roll her eyes and tell me that there are cliques. My child is not in the clique. Since she is not within the boundaries of the said clique...behaviors like the one I found offensive are "normal". She said this with a shrug of the shoulders and a declaration that things will most likely get better for all of the kids outside of said clique when they enter middle school and find that the social pool is larger.

Okay. So that one incident is reflective of a pattern nobody feels like addressing. THAT is what bothers me.

My experience tells me that to shrug your shoulders and hope for the best isn't as effective a strategy as the tried and true just telling a kid that you are the adult and adults expect better of kids than to be observers of rude behavior. I hate to drag out the old phrase, "In my day..." but, in my day kids were afraid to act like they had little regard for other classmates in front of adults. Sure, they felt annoyed with classmates. However, they were expected to find a way of behaving like they respected the other kids as people. I'm not saying any behavior displayed in front of me was beyond normal for a kid of that age. Kids are very fallible. Parents are fallible. Teachers, too. I get that. I'm saying that the lack of concern on the part of the adults was shocking. When did adults become so afraid of telling a kid to just, "do better"?

I addressed this at the Catholic school where my kids attended. I was appalled that rude behavior from kids went unaddressed. Some teachers appeared to go about tending to these matters in ways that were annoyingly passive-aggressive and others simply pretended they didn't know bullying was going on all around them. The principal refused to acknowledge the problem even as many families fled the school. The priest said it wasn't his job to address the problem because he didn't like conflict and it wasn't what he considered his strength. My kids were treated fairly well by comparison to others, but I saw that they were learning a way of conduct I could not tolerate. There were kids all around them who were really feeling left out of the social structure of the school and it goes against my faith to sit back and passively accept that. So we left the school. It broke my heart. I wanted very much to give my kids a Catholic education. I loved the idea of them going to mass with classmates each week as part of their curriculum. Then again, learning about Jesus among classmates didn't seem valuable once I realized that the Catholic values were left behind as the traditions were being taught. Traditions are just empty gestures if your heart isn't in it and my heart wasn't after I saw how a few of the kids in particular were treated by other kids and how the bad behavior was ignored by teachers.

In the past few years since, I have loved the education my kids are getting from public school. I do love the atmosphere they are learning in and I feel loathe to criticize except that...I have to because I am a parent and these kids are my life. If I didn't speak up when I know something isn't right, what kind of parent would I be to them? I could speak all day about the virtues of children's teachers and I I really do try hard to be there to do so whenever possible. I have a great deal of respect for the school and the teachers and the other parents. I really, wholeheartedly love my community. It's a blessing beyond anything I could have asked for when I asked for God to bless my family. No joke. It is--we are blessed.

My only gripe appears to be with a particular mindset of the larger community. It's only one thing, but it makes a big impact on our little children. Who am I to say this? Just a parent. Just a person who studied child development and taught a little bit before becoming a stay at home mom. So bear with me. My thinking is that it isn't doing our kids any favors to let them create their own boundaries. We are the adults. We need to tell them when they go out of bounds. We do this with love and without wavering really well all the time. We can't let that stop when it comes to how they treat other kids. That's what we signed on for when we decided to be parents or teachers or caregivers. Just as we didn't let babies throw sand in the eyes of other babies in the sandbox; we can't let our preteens decide to harm other preteens with their words or with exclusion or other 'mean girl' behaviors. We have experience with this. We just tell them, "No." We explain why we are saying, "No." We give a hug and tell them we know they will do better next time. We get over it. Hopefully, if they are not sociopaths, they learn. I honestly don't think any of them are sociopaths. If they are, we can help them at this stage before they are incarcerated, right? My husband may be a defense attorney, but he doesn't need the business so bad that he hopes to see any of your children in his office any time soon, hee hee.

More seriously, I don't understand why setting boundaries or teaching appropriate social skills with kids is something that apparently, more than a few parents and even some teachers don't feel empowered to do. When I was a nanny or teaching in Americorps and even when I tutored with Chicago Cares with Cabrini Greene kids~I was considered a slouch at this stuff. I was considered a softie. Nobody wanted to leave the kids with me because I wasn't much of a disciplinarian. How is it that these days as a parent...I'm the bad cop?

I don't get it. I don't. Please tell me what I'm missing.

If my children are ever rude, obnoxious or ill mannered and I don't see this happening...please tell me. It's an open invitation. I don't want to raise that sort of child. I want my child to learn early what her expectations from me and her dad are...(and we are pretty lax about those standards, to be sure) so that she will be able to function in the larger world when her time comes. We all want that for all of our kids, right? We are in this together, aren't we?

It's not that I don't appreciate all of the great things that I see in the community or in the school. I absolutely see that I am in a place where people are good. I see how hard teachers and parents work to instill good values, a great education and appreciation in the kids they spend time nurturing. That's a given. I think it is, anyway. It's a given because I do my part. I show up. I participate as much as is allowed. I do whatever I can to make the work of the community better. I don't know if I'm a jerk for thinking this way, but I kind of hope that this means we are working together. We can count on each other. I don't think teachers get paid enough to inspire the kids they way they do. I wish they were better compensated. However, as a stay at home mom, I don't get a salary. I go without. I am one hundred percent sacrificing everything to be all that is possible for me to be for my kids so that they can grow up to be productive members of this society. So can't I ask for something in return?

I mean, because...all I am asking is that we might work together in this. That's it.

I know I am from another place and I wasn't raised in this community and that I'll never be one of the people who really matter around here. That's what I came to realize as a price to be paid for the quieter street and the lower crime rate than where I'm from and the lower cost of living and the wide open spaces and the beautiful sounds of birds and the polluted but still mostly pretty Lake Menomin and the proximity to the Stout campus and the beautiful Mabel Tainter.

My husband's firm pays taxes that flow into the community. My family pays taxes. Isn't that something?

Why can't I expect that not just my kid but every kid at my kids' school will be treated respectfully by kids and teachers alike? Not hailed as a wunderkind...but just treated respectfully. Not left out. Not sitting alone on a buddy bench or just left to fend for herself while teachers look on?

I love both my kids too much to think that they deserve less. I may not know your kids well, but I have enough love in my heart to want more for them that to experience isolation and rudeness day after day while their minds are forming and their personalities are developing. It isn't any hardship for me to want to promote kindness toward them. Not one of them seems undeserving to me.

So my question to the community is...don't you love ALL of the kids of this community enough to think that ALL of them deserve the same? Not just mine. Mine are treated pretty well when you compare to some of the kids. They aren't from here and we aren't rich and our family doesn't have a lot of weight to throw around...but still...I mean, don't they matter to you?

You matter to us. You are what we want to be here for and why my family is choosing to put down roots here. We left what we knew to be here with you. Doesn't that say something?

Maybe I'm off my rocker. If so, I apologize. Maybe I'm too sensitive. I'm working on not being so thin skinned. Just please, accept that if you want anyone to be there for you--we are there. It's all we want to be and all we know how to be. We aren't perfect and our kids are not saints. We just want very much to see them grow up to be productive and contributing and we have to ask for the community to support that because it doesn't happen in a vacuum. We aren't asking for anything we aren't willing to give.

Peace and love to you. xo

Love Note

Have you seen Maria Bamford perform stand up? She is hilarious. I have never seen any other comedian perform in the way that she does. Even if I didn't know what it is like to experience anxiety, I would think she is hilarious. The fact that she makes her experiences with anxiety so funny makes me like her even more. It lifts the burden of shame a little to be able to laugh with her. I just love her work.

I listened to a podcast of the New Yorker Radio Hour (episode 18) that she was featured in and was struck by how she responded to a question about her work and how it reveals sometimes embarrassing things about her family. I'm paraphrasing, but I understood her response to mean that she and her family understand that her portrayal of her experience of being in her family has everything to do with her and not really very much about them. It is easy for her family to laugh with her because they know they are not being laughed at by her even when the material seems very personal.

This is what I wish I could ask for somehow and receive from my family. I have never been able to write anything that didn't in some small way draw from my own experiences. This doesn't mean I am some Harriet the Spy with her little notebook trying to capture and record embarrassing things about other people. I studied English in school because it was the only thing I could really focus on over any length of time. I kept taking Creative Writing courses because I got good grades in them. I graduated and veered away from submitting any writing anywhere because the stories that were fiction and somehow got published in my school's literary magazine made people in my family feel bad. I felt really ashamed. There wasn't a whole lot that connected the stories to anyone, but there must have been enough. Nobody said I couldn't write anymore. I just put it all aside.

Each time I sit at the computer to write something, it is because I feel buoyed up by some remembrance of praise from people like my husband or my good friend, Meg or former teachers who told me, "You have so much talent. You should be writing!" and each time I back away from doing so it is because a louder internal voice is saying, "YOU are a jerk. You will hurt people. You can't write without making other people think you are criticizing them. You can only see things through a lens that nobody wants to look through. Just be happy to be a mom. That should be enough."

So I am thinking of asking in some sort of love note for permission from the people who are close to me whether by birth or by choice to write what is in me. Yes, that means some of the things we experienced together may look like something a character appears to experience in a story. However, at no time would it be to exploit or harm anyone.

Does that sound reasonable? I mean, chances are strong that nobody actually reads any of this. Chances are strong that nobody ever will. I may never actually finish anything I have started outside of these unstructured blog entries. It isn't like anyone has a whole lot to lose. It is something that helps me to feel like I have some purpose other than filling up facebook with daily posts (sometimes hourly posts) and pictures of my kids.

Maybe if I did that, my family would understand that I love them. I know that whenever I write anything, the person I am leaving exposed is me. I wish they knew that. It would have been great if I could have been a different kind of daughter, sister, niece, aunt, friend, wife or mom. For whatever reason, this is all I've got. Just this. I wonder if I wrote that kind of a letter if they would agree in advance to remember that whatever mirror I'm holding up in front of anyone else ultimately reflects me.

I imagine that Maria Bamford's ability to work with so much freedom has a lot to do with the support she receives from the people she loves. I wish I knew how to ask for and receive that. She's a very talented comedian and probably would be as talented and successful either way. It's just different when you are given permission. Maybe I need to give that myself. Maybe that's really the only way it works. Maybe I need to write that kind of letter to myself. "Dear me, just write, dammit. Who cares if you aren't any good? So what if people don't like what you have to say? They won't like you any more for keeping quiet. Do what you were put on this Earth to do. It's not about making people happy." Just feels so selfish and scary. Am I ready to do that?

Bloviations

It has been a long, long time since I sat down to write anything here. I was listening to the Moth on the radio the other day and heard a story about a man who was a celebrated teacher and who went through a terrible ordeal because words from his blog were misrepresented and taken out of context and distributed to people in his community.

Oy. How disturbing, right? Well, it turned out well in the end. People who cared about him or who cared about what was the right thing to do in that situation actually read through his blog and discovered the content was benign. It did leave him with a new appreciation for being careful about what he wrote.

I have been stuck in a place of not wanting to write anything that offends or disturbs anyone for a long time and so the message of the radio program resonated with me. I don't write with every audience in mind. I tend to write thinking that people will assume some sentences are meant to be heard with a joking voice and some are more serious.

Anyway, that's why I have been putting off writing anything here. When I say I am a stay at home mom who is stuck in small town WI...I don't mean I hate my small town. I mean that I am doing my best to figure out what I have to contribute here. It could be worse. I could be in some small town in the Deep South with my Chicago accent. I could be in a remote village of the Ukraine. I would be just as lost but not as close to my hometown.

Not that my hometown is so much better. It's full of crime. It's a murdery place. It has rats running through alleys. People honk their car horns all the time. There is stifling traffic. Everything costs more there than it does where I live. I know all of that, but it is where the people I grew up with live. It's where my parents met. It's where my grandparents met. It's where I think of when I think of home.

I don't actually see myself as being stuck here. I just feel disconnected sometimes. I'm working on that. It's going along fine. I don't know if things are improving because I am less concerned with fitting in than I was when I had such high hopes of becoming something other than what I am or if I just added enough positive into my life to push away the negative. Life sometimes feels like it is understood in hindsight. Maybe I will understand later.

For now, things are just fine.