Everybody needs a wife

You will be happy to know that I have recovered from my pity party last week. Very depressing that. And DH was very concerned with fixing things so I would feel better. Only, as I tried to explain, I'm not sure how much can be fixed. Many of the problems I have with motherhood are the same problems so many other mothers are having. To some extent it is simply the structure of our society that needs to be changed. I cannot change that alone. I think that only after more moms voice their frustrations with societal expectations, perfectionism, and a lack of choices, may we start to see some movement forward.

Some things I can change and I am working on that, but it is a bit like pushing up against a wall. After talking to DH for awhile I told him that what would help some, at least, was hearing that he thought I was doing a good job and he appreciated what I did and that he was willing to make small changes when possible. I know he didn't believe me. But I truly think that hearing, on a regular basis, "Hey, thanks for all you do.", "You're a great mom.", and an occasional "Honey, I'll take the kids for a few hours, why don't you get out and take a break.", would make a difference to me. Everyone needs a wife or mom. We would all like to be cared for, catered to, and given praise. Since I am the wife, I get to do that for everyone else. But I need to be cared for occasionally too. DH is starting to get this. He planned a great Valentines's day weekend. (We even had dinner out by ourselves. Nirvana!) And we are starting to negotiate more about childcare and even chores, instead of me just hearing "I have to work. Period. You have to take care of everything else." Of course he does have to work. And his job is very demanding. But if I make sure not to trample on his his work time, maybe he'll learn to make sure I get some break time. It is all in the balance.

That doesn't solve the whole problem of course, but it can make life more manageable. And right now, I'll take what I can get. That is, until my mail order bride arrives.

I love you just the way you are

This morning I hosted a meeting of our neighborhood's "baby network". Once a month people with babies and toddlers get together to let the kids play while they meet new people, swap stories, and check out each other's houses. Ah Suburbia! I had only attended one other meeting due to scheduling conflicts and thought that hosting would mean I would have to attend. Q was at school, which was a huge help. Most of the kids were younger and he is having real problems with other kids coming into his house and playing with his things . So I was happy not to have to deal with that.

The meeting did what it was supposed to do in many ways. I met a number of other moms in the neighborhood and we swapped stories while they checked out my house. But the most amazing thing to me was watching C interact with the other children. Socially C is coming into her own. At almost 20 months she is very interactive and interested in other people. This morning there were two children here slightly older than C and she was thrilled. Of course there was the general sharing issue. "No! That's mine!" Followed by a grabbing and whining if things don't work out right away. But Chloe was actually playing with the other children. They were handing things back and forth. She was cooperating with them, even talking to them. You could tell she liked being around other children.

This is such a revelation to me because Q was never like this. Q actually only likes, as far as I can tell, two or three other kids his age, though we regularly see many more than that. Those favorite kids he asks to see occasionally. Only when he gets around them he is not really interested in playing with them, unless he wants to chase them or wants them to chase him. Beyond that they are better at a distance. Watching C with other kids makes me want to cry because Q feels so uncomfortable with it.

Always when I feel this way I am torn. They are many within the autism community that would tell you they are perfectly happy not interacting with people. Don't try to change them. Accept them for who they are. There is much of that I agree with. I don't want Q to feel like I don't love him or that he would be better if he was more typical or normal. But at the same time I spend so much time and energy in therapy trying to get his speech up to par, and trying to give him the ability to regulate his sensory system, and work on his fine and gross motor skills, and relate socially to other people. Where is the line between we love you no matter what and just want to give you coping skills, and we wish you were more normal and are disappointed because you're not?

I am not disappointed in my son. I don't wish he was someone else. But I admit that when I see C interact I wonder why it has to be so hard for Q and by extension so hard for us all. I feel incredible guilt for saying that but the simple fact is that if Q were more typical, my life would be a lot easier. Financially we would be in a much better place. I wouldn't feel so stressed running from therapy to therapy and then supplementing at home. I could get together with other moms and watch the kids go play (happily) instead of trying to make sure Q didn't get aggressive or trying to make every playdate a social skills lesson. I wouldn't feel so guilty when I told them to go play by themselves or decided to just hang out and be.

I love my incredible son. I love him for who he is and what he does and I am so proud of him. He has come so far and I have high hopes for his future as well. I don't wish he was typical. I just wish life was a little easier, for all of us.

This utter madness

Yesterday I was at the grocery store with C when I saw the cover of this week's Newsweek. An article entitled "The Myth of the Perfect Mother" caught my eye. As the cashier scanned it he said that I was the second mom that morning looking at that article. So I took it home and read it, and the related article by Anna Quindlen. I felt like the author had pegged my life perfectly.

Some memorable lines:

"...until one day, when my daughter was about four, I realized that I had turned into a human television set, so filled with 24-hour children's programming that I had no thoughts left of my own."

”Once my daughters began school, I was surrounded, it seemed, by women who had surrendered their better selves—and their sanity—to motherhood...Who—like myself—appeared to be sleep-walking through life in a state of quiet panic."

"Women today mother in the excessive, control-freakish way that they do in part because they are psychologically conditioned to do so. But they also do it because, to a large extent, they have to. Because they are unsupported, because their children are not taken care of, in any meaningful way, by society at large. Because there is right now no widespread feeling of social responsibility—for children, for families, for anyone, really—and so they must take everything onto themselves. And because they can't, humanly, take everything onto themselves, they simply go nuts."

The author's recommendations for solving these problems are good ones. I would love to see some of them put into place. But I am practical enough to know that the chances of any of those great ideas making it into real policy changes are very low. If you're not a mom, you probably don't care all that much, even though you should.

And then the author suggests that to start changes in our own lives we "take a breather. Throw out the schedules, turn off the cell phone, cancel the tutors (fire the OT!). Let's spend some real quality time with our families, just talking, hanging out, not doing anything for once. And let ourselves be." And I read this and then sit there stumped because I do not have that luxury. I have a child on the autism spectrum, a child with special needs. I not only can't fire the OT, I wouldn't want to. I am trying to come up with ways to give Q more intervention, not less. And I feel pulled in about a million different directions.

Anna Quindlen's great follow up essay makes me want to nod my head in agreement, though I know how screwed up I am when parts of it make me gasp with her honesty. When she admits that she didn't take her kids to weekly sports because she would rather be reading at home, I had to stop myself from going into that judging mode. That mode where mothers spend so much time trying to prove that their children and their mothering is so much better than anyone else's. Which just goes to hide the fact that I wish I could be that honest. I feel incredible amounts of guilt when I try to do something for myself at what I feel is the expense of my children. Blog when I could be playing with my kids? I couldn't do that. Clean and do laundry yes, but time just for me, no.

So I read all this and go, "Yes, I agree and I want something (anything!) to change!" But what? Quindlen ends her article by saying "A good time is what they remember long after toddler programs and art projects are over. The rest is just scheduling." Sure, for my daughter I agree. She needs to learn how to play for herself. I don't feel guilty about sending her to preschool next year. She'll love it and I will love a small (6 hour a week) break. Left alone for a short time she will play by herself or read a book and most of the time, I am perfectly happy to have her do this. But Q is a different story. For Q too much time left to himself is time he spends in an autistic wonderland re-enacting videos and doing self stimulatory behaviors.

Early intervention experts recommend that any kid on the autism spectrum spend 15-25 hours a week in therapeutic intervention. Q attends school 12 1/2 hours a week and then another 2 hours of private therapy. And the rest is left up to me. I'd say it is left up to me and DH but DH, though I love him dearly, is a workaholic so devoted to his calling that he has little time for anything else. Intervention with Q is low on his list. And I understand that in a way. I wish I had the same choice to make. But I don't. I don't feel like I have any choices to make at all.

Recently I made a decision to apply to seminary part time next year to start towards a Master of Divinity degree. It is something that I have wanted to do for a long time but because of various fears and obstacles, I have put it off. I am applying because I need to find myself again and I need to figure out how I can be something else than the cook, cleaner, and babysitter. But I am not optimistic that somehow this will make my life easier. I imagine it will make it much harder and any time that I need to do things for myself or my schooling will be hard to come by. Already I am trying to spend time some Sunday afternoons with the youth group in my church. This means DH watches the kids when Sunday afternoons is usually DH's work time. So his work gets pushed back and it impacts the whole rest of the week as he scrambles to make it up. Which impacts me as I struggle to do without his help while he works. It is a vicious cycle that seems to never end.

I cannot truly put into words how frustrated and tired and helpless I feel. I sit here with tears streaming down my face unable to see a way out of this utter madness. I love my kids. God do I love them. And I love being a mom. I love spending time with them and snuggling with them and watching them grow up. But I need a break, a way to make this work that doesn't involve me going insane. I just can't see it.

Come what may - warning VERY sappy

For my Valentine:

With this ring I thee wed.

It is my symbol to remind me of what I pledged to you almost 10 years ago. I wed you. I married you. I joined my life with yours. Our lives, though separate, are joined into a covenant in which we promised to be present to each other, and with each other. I would wed you all over again.

With my body I thee worship.

My body, such as it is, belongs to you. Not in an icky "I am your property" way. (I may read trash novels but I don't actually want to live in 19th century England.) It belongs to you because you are the only person I would ever share it with. It belongs to you because one of the most incredible things you can share with another person is that instant where you no longer know where one person begins and the other ends. It belongs to you because no one else would ever appreciate it quite the way you would. You know what it has gone through and why it looks like it does. (And you still love it anyway.)

With all my worldly goods I thee endow.

Everything that I have I give to you. Things might make life easier but they don't make you happy. They don't challenge you and make you think. They don't try to think of ways to make you happy. You can't confess your darkest secrets to them. They don't make you a better person.

I've heard the line - You complete me. But that's not it. You don't complete me, you anticipate me. You have the power to pull all the best and worst things out of me and make me better then I am. That is love.

Come what may, I will always love you. It's not perfect but it is real.

It comes so slow, The letting go

Recently I dropped Q off at his old typical preschool, of the pre-autism dx days, to attend a movement and music class usually run by his old teacher. For now Q attends our school district's special education preschool but next fall in addition to attending the special ed school, he will also put in a few mornings at the typical preschool. To get him ready for this I am trying to reintroduce him to his old school. This might sound like way too much school for a four year old but Quinn needs both the special ed stuff and the social stuff a regular preschool can give him so he will be very busy next year.

I was very nervous about taking him to this music class. I guess in a way it felt like a trial for next year. If he went there and totally was unable to deal then we were in trouble. If the teachers somehow didn't see him as succeeding maybe they would be reluctant to let him start in a real class next fall. And I worried about Q - Would he be scared? Would he know what was going on and be able to follow along? Would he be able to use the language he has to make himself understood? Would he get aggressive if he couldn't use his words? I wasn't sure what to expect. It would be my first time leaving him alone in a typical setting since he had been at school last year. Every other activity he attends now is for special needs kids or he's with adults who have known him for a long time.

When I got to the school I was alarmed that I didn't see his old teacher. Then someone told me that she was out today because her son was sick. Instead there was another teacher who I knew by sight but didn't really know Q at all. I wasn't sure what to do. Did I leave him there anyway and just hope for the best? Did I take him home and try again next week? Q didn't seemed fazed unless he saw me moving towards the door. He also wasn't playing with any of the other kids. But they all knew each other from school and he was the new kid. Otherwise he seemed ok. I quickly touched base with the teacher. All that was left was for me to go home and leave him there. I was terrified. But I said goodbye and the teacher took him on her lap while she read a story. He looked concerned for a minute but held it together.

I stood outside the classroom (yes lurking in the hallway) for a few more minutes. When the other kids went to paint, Quinn sounded like he might protest for a second but then I didn't hear any more from him. I left with my heart in my mouth. Would he be okay? At least he was off to a good start.

When you are pregnant this being is inside you kicking and poking and already starting to show his or her separateness. Then your baby is born and the separation truly begins. First they sit up and learn to move on their own. Then they start solid foods and start to wean off your milk. One day you try to help them and they insist on doing it themselves (this isn't Q's situation but certainly is true with C). Then you are sending them off to school on their own. Every step sends them farther from you and you have to learn how to let them go.

In Q's case this is especially hard to do. When you have a kid with special needs there are all these other issues to take into account. Will they expect him to be just like the typical kids? Will anyone understand him? Will he understand them? All the separation stuff you normally go through is amplified. I have come to think that raising Q just requires more of everything than I would give to a typical child. Although to be honest C, though very typical, is also very demanding. But I know I don't worry about her future as much as I constantly worry about Q's.

How does a mom learn to let go? I don't know exactly. You sort of make it up as you go along. It is slow, and scary, and painful. But there is no way to stop it. Your children are always moving away from you from the time they are born. In the end Q did wonderfully in his class, and when his old teacher did see him again she was very impressed with how far he's come since last year. As always I need to learn how to just breathe and let go.

Out to find the better part of me

There are no coincidences. I am a firm believer in this. Last night I was at our weekly playgroup meeting. This playroup has evolved over the years into a sort of potluck dinner meeting of friends. We've been meeting for years, ever since Q was 4 months old. ( As an aside this is the sort of thing I'd be insanely jealous of if I was on the outside of it looking in. A group of five or six women getting together with their kids once a week to have dinner, let the kids play together, and just enjoy some time with friends. And yet I totally take it for granted. I need to appreciate stuff like this more.) There was only three of us this week, which made it possible to have a little deeper conversation. In my post a few days ago I mentioned a friend of mine who was able to send her daughter to school a few days a week while she took art classes and did pottery in her basement. Of course on the outside looking in that seemed like an ideal situation. Only I was wrong. Turns out her husband is getting concerned about what she plans to do with this hobby eventually. Does she plan to go into business selling her pottery, and if so how will she do this? He makes a lot of money at his job but it's a job he really doesn't like and eventually money starts to run out. She doesn't know what she wants to do. She's not really that interested in the business aspect of it, but she knows her current situation is very much a luxury and she feels badly about that.

So I guess my lesson from this is that no one has it all figured out, even when it seems like they do. And there are no easy answers. For myself I have decided to spend at least a half hour a day doing some intellectual activity: reading, blogging, or good conversation, etc. I think this will help, though I have no idea where it will lead eventually or if it will lead anywhere at all. But for now at least I feel like I am making a positive change, one step at a time.

When I'm 64

Let me start by saying that I did not watch the State of the Union speech last night. I specifically ignored it and though I perused the stories about it in the Washington Post this morning, I did not read the text of the speech and nor do I intend to. Maybe this isn't the best way to deal with the fact that we have to live through another 4 years of total disaster with W as our president, but it is MY way. I have listened to W at times. I have tried to make an effort to understand what half of America sees in him. But I just can't see it and so I didn't want to listen to it.

That being said I know that the bulk of what was talked about was Social Security and its (supposed) imminent crisis. As a younger American let me just say that I totally don't expect that I will one day be able to collect Social Security as long as things are kept the way they are. And I have no idea whether it will take small tweaks or a major overhaul to change this. But I have serious problems with W's push to deal with this now. First, IRAQ. I should be able to stop there with no further explanation but I will explain anyway. We are spending tremendous amounts of money in Irag. Our troops are spread thin and despite everyone's rosy look at the election I don't think that the problems there are suddenly going to disappear. Why are we trying to overhaul a major staple of our government when we need to be spending time and energy dealing with an actual crisis? Maybe because we are trying to make people forget about Iraq? Maybe because major campaign backers will benefit from these changes? Maybe because killing social security will take away a major Democratic issue and weaken the Democrats even further? Nothing in this is actually about saving social security at all. Hey W, you want a real crisis? How about HEALTH CARE!!!!!!

I know I sound cynical. I had hope before this past election. Now I have only doubt and suspicions. But if W is allowed to get away with once again shifting the debate, lying to everyone, and overpowering any and all dissent, more than social security will be in crisis.

I'll go sailing

I just have to share this with the rest of the world. Q, my almost 4 year old boy, is somewhat obsessive. Diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum, he gets fixated on certain things. Helpful when the fixation is a good one and helps you solve some deep question or prove a theory, less helpful when it is an unhealthy fixation that leads to no where. Narrow field of interests they call it. Anyway, Q's current obsession is with the Disney movie Finding Nemo. He watches it almost every day when he gets home from school. As you can imagine I know entirely too much about this movie. The ending credits of the movie are accompanied by the song "Beyond the Sea", an old standard lounge song. Having heard this way too many times I started singing it to the kids. They loved it. Now Q has taken to singing it. And just now he sang practically the whole song in tune with a lounge styling to it that was just adorable. Having a 4 year old sing "Happy we'll be beyond the sea" at the top of his lungs just makes me smile. Sometimes this job isn't so bad after all.

Pieces of me you've never seen

I'm trying to be more interesting. It's not that this is difficult because I am incapable of being interesting. It's difficult because most of what I do all day every day is just not terribly interesting. DH works at a university. He is paid to think deep thoughts and share those deep thoughts with other professors and students. I do a lot of cleaning, laundry, food preparation, errand running, and above all playing/talking to/disciplining two small children. In addition I try to do a lot of home therapy with Q using ideas I get from his speech and occupational therapists.

Let's step back here and say that not for a minute do I think all of these things are unimportant. It is important to teach and raise my children. They need stimulation to grow their minds, love to make them feel good about themselves, limits so they feel safe and start to learn right from wrong. In that way I do an incredibly important job. Q also needs more attention, more exposure to language, more of just about everything that you provide to a typical preschooler. Keeping the house tidy is important too. Having places for everything and everything in its place means my family can find what they need when they need it. Having clean clothes is always a plus. And pretty much everybody likes to eat. Finally, someone needs to do the grocery shopping, send packages, go to the drugstore, etc. And that someone is me. All of this is very important stuff. It needs to be done and it needs to be done well and with love and caring. I am proud of the job I do as a stay at home mom.

But lets also not sugar-coat it and say that it is a fascinating and stimulating day to day job situation. Cleaning is not exciting. Laundry is incredibly boring. (My least favorite chore probably.) Playing with the kids is fun and great for them but it does not offer intellectual stimulation in the same way conversation with another adult can. Reading a book that doesn't have numerous pictures in it is difficult to do while my kids are awake. Reading a book with too many words often seems beyond my ability when they're asleep at night. No one ever tells you that motherhood is such an all consuming job. It is physical and emotional and above all constant. It never ends.

So how does one stay home and stay interesting? I have no good answer to this. If you work outside the home it is a different situation. You at least get to have conversations with the possibility of substance. I do think deep thoughts I just rarely get the chance to share them with people and I almost never get the chance to make anything out of them. Do I regret staying home? Sometimes. But I also don't think that just going to work and putting my kids, especially one with special needs, in a day care situation would solve the problem. Not to mention that I hated my former job and have no interest in going back to that. I have a friend who solves her being interesting/feeding your soul issue by having a great deal of money. Her 4 year old daughter goes to school three days a week and my friend goes to art classes and does pottery in her basement. We don't have that kind of money or any money really. So that's a no go. I could stop trying so hard but I fear my brain and my marriage would suffer.

I think there are pieces of me that I've never seen. And I want to see them but I have no time and no energy to go looking for them. Maybe I am just trying to do too much at one time. Maybe I have to step back and start over, start easier, start smaller. Now that I think about it, that may very well be the answer. Babysteps. Thanks Flylady. I can do this. I will do this. I think I just found a new piece.