What Makes Your Heart Sing?

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Did you ever have the fantasy, as a child or young adult, that a secret admirer knew how incredible you were, somehow knew your favorite flowers and would pronounce their love for you bearing gifts on Valentine’s Day to the world?  Bear with me if you didn’t, because I had this Cinderella-type dream as a kid. I could visualize how it would happen, though couldn’t quite make out who my prince was. Regardless, the idea of some mystery boy being into me really made my heart sing, or, at least that’s what I thought back then.

As I grew older, I discovered Valentine’s Day might not be all it was made out to be. I stressed as a younger woman about having a valentine—not good for my self-esteem, the mystery prince was nowhere to be found, and as a mature adult the holiday seemed more confusing than satisfying.  Do people actually need to wait until Valentine’s Day to show or receive love from each other? That doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it?

My children love Valentine’s Day, not because they understand what all the fuss is about, but because they know there’s a good chance they’ll get some Valentine’s Day-themed goodies from Mom and Dad. Chocolates that come in a heart shaped box—cool!  We make a point to tell our children we love them everyday, and often multiple times a day. And when they get older we’ll talk to them about the holiday and ways to really show someone you care as you experience it, not saving it for February 14th.

I love getting flowers from my husband, but love connecting with him even more. Talking about things other than work or the kids, getting a foot rub, or him taking my hand unexpectedly makes me feel close to him and really loved. To think that my husband and I have the opportunity to teach our boys how to express their feelings for someone they care about when they feel it makes me smile.

In fact, it makes my heart sing.

What makes your heart sing?

The Super Bowl – A Family Affair

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The Harbaugh family is giving new meaning to the Super Bowl being a family affair. Sons John and Jim will face each other as opposing head coaches in the Super Bowl later today. Their parents have shared their joy in their sons making it to this pinnacle event and their awareness that one son will win and the other will lose—a difficult situation for any parent to wrestle with.

What is infectious about their story to me has little to do with the Super Bowl today, but their openness about how much they want each other to succeed, how much they admire and respect each other, and how much they love each other.

I’ll be watching the game this Sunday with my own family. I’m expecting the game to be interesting, the commercials entertaining, and time with my family fulfilling. The Harbaugh’s story is an inspiring one. It’s a story about the love of the game, and a love for each other. What a great example they are setting for us all.

Go Harbaughs!

Getting over Business Trip Guilt

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Do you have a job that requires you to travel? I do.

I used to love business travel. Seeing new cities, experiencing new places and sights. It seemed so glamorous, so exciting, so adventurous, and so important. Once I had my children, business travel became less attractive, mainly because of the guilt I’ve felt every time I leave them.

It took me several years, but I finally realized the guilt I felt over being away on business wasn’t as much about the kids as it was about the responsibilities I was passing on to my husband while I was away. When I’m away, he becomes a single parent. He has to get everyone up in the morning, and put them to bed at night, he’ has to get them fed and dressed, he had to drop them off and pick them up from school, and then get himself to work. The guilt was all consuming prior to and during each trip. My priorities of family and work clashed, and I couldn’t get them to equalize. The reality is my family is my number one priority and always will be. My job helps provide for my family and gives me an opportunity to contribute in a meaningful way. It also requires me to travel from time to time.  I thought by preparing as much as I could prior to going away, and fretting over the extra burden I was putting on him, I was somehow making up for my upcoming absence. The reality is, in a relationship, or more importantly a partnership, one person doesn’t bear more of the burden than the other, they share in the responsibility. Occasionally they will need to pick up the slack when the other is absent. What I didn’t realize was the stress I was feeling over my upcoming travel was affecting more than just me. It was impacting my husband too. Thankfully a third party helped enlighten me to think of the situation in a different way.

My husband is a very capable father, and when I’m away, he has an opportunity to have our sons all to himself. While I’m away, they could do different things, like going to a new restaurant or playing a fun activity, outside our normal routine. I need to take advantage of travel too. I get some needed alone time and have an opportunity to learn and connect with others, things that are very energizing for me.

I know we appreciate each other a little more upon my return. When I recently shared with my sons that I would be leaving for a trip I was surprised to hear how excited they were by the prospect of me leaving. “Oh, Mom, can you bring us back something?” my oldest son asked. “Yes,” chimed in my youngest, “will you bring us back something, please?” I had to smile. It reminded me of my own childhood when I anxiously awaiting my father returning from his business travels bringing something small, like a Hostess Fruit Pie or a pencil he picked up along the way.  It was more symbolic than anything, it reminded my sisters and I that he’d been thinking about us while he was away and we’d been thinking about him too.

I now understand guilt doesn’t help my husband or I when I travel. Travel creates an opportunity for us to appreciate what we have when we are together and apart. Its our chance to do something different and enjoy each other more when we reunite. Thankfully my travel is infrequent, or my guilt might be tested again. But even if that work requires more travel in the future, my husband and I will make decisions together on how to make it easier for each other to get through the situation. After all, it isn’t just one of our burdens to bear.

The Only Thing Constant is Change

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My oldest son is getting ready to lose his first tooth. He can wiggle the tooth back and forth, and you can see the new tooth coming in behind it. I recently asked him if he would like for my husband or I to help him get his tooth out.  He immediately responded with a strong and slightly concerned, “No!” We all agreed we would let the tooth fall out when it was ready.

I made an incorrect assumption when I asked my son that question. Most of his classmates have already lost teeth so I figured he really wanted to lose his. But I think like any change we go through we have to adjust to it, get ourselves prepared for it, so we can handle what comes next once the change occurs.

A son’s first new tooth reminded me of when I first became a parent and how quickly my life changed once he arrived. While I had tried to get myself ready for parenthood through classes, books and talking with others, I knew it would take time to adjust to feeling like a parent.  There was excitement in preparing for my son to arrive, but also fear, I didn’t know what to expect really, and if someone had asked me a few days or weeks before my son if they could help him be born faster I would have reacted the same way my son reacted, “No!” because I needed and wanted that additional time to prepare myself.

I am glad my son reminded me of this with his tooth. He’ll be going through many changes in the coming years. I need to appreciate the changes I know are coming, and be prepared to help him navigate the changes we’re not expecting. It won’t be easy, it might even be a little scary, but I know we’ll get through it together one change at a time.

When Helping Isn’t Helping at All

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I recently discovered that my youngest son has been manipulating me. Not just once or twice. This has been ongoing for quite some time. To provide you with a somewhat recent example, he has learned to manipulate my attempts to get him ready and out the door with his sweetest smiles, his best ‘I’m sorry’, sprinkled in with many ‘I love you-s’. Of course, my son doesn’t realize what he is doing is manipulation, nor does he understand what that word means. He does know that when he invokes these strategies they work!

I love my children very much and tell them when they exhibit an undesired behavior that while I might not like what they are doing I always love them. Yet here is my child over apologizing and saying, “I love you” upwards of ten times a day to delay having to do something or trying to get out of something altogether. I had to reevaluate what was really going on.

Being the baby in the family, I realized in some ways I have treated my youngest son like one. He can put on his own clothes, make his bed and clean up after himself. He’s been able to do this for a while, yet I still jump in to help him when he takes too long. I know if I just jump in I can get things done more quickly and we can be on our way. What wasn’t clear to me was the unintended message of “I don’t think you can do the task, therefore I’m going to help you,” I was sending him. Not a great confidence builder for my son.

I do have commitments that require my family to be out the door at a certain time each day. It takes all of us working as a family to make that happen. Each of us has tasks we each our responsible for, and all of us need to be done in a certain amount of time.

I invoked some strategies that I hadn’t used in a while and am helping my son move towards doing his share and feeling good about his contribution. Breaking free from the use of “sorry” and “I love you.” I now give him time limits for when things need to do done with reminders when we are nearing the end (e.g. he has 20 minutes to eat breakfast. I give him a five warning and another at two minutes if we still have a lot of food to go). A consequence is communicated up front if he is unable to meet his goal (e.g. you won’t have anything to eat until snack time at school if you don’t eat your breakfast now). It takes work, discipline and patience to implement this. It would be so much easier if I just did it myself, but in the long term, doing this the right way, holding my son accountable and giving him the framework to have success should yield better long term results around his own confidence, sense of accountability and ownership.

I won’t miss all the “sorrys” or “I love yous”.  I’ll treasure the new ones I get, because they’ll come without motivation behind them other than to express how he really feels. And while it will take practice on my part I believe there will be much satisfaction knowing I helped him more by not helping him.

How to Avoid the January Blues and the Resolution Cliff

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Each New Year I start off in a blue kind-of-state.  The holidays are over, the decorations are down, and the magic of the season is quickly fading away. Top that off with the expectation that each of us are to come up with a resolution to keep during the New Year makes it all the more depressing.

The end of 2012 brought a lot of talk, stress and anxiety around the fiscal cliff and the importance of avoiding it. I offer up that we need to do the same with resolutions. Resolutions tend to involve a lot of talk, which can create stress and discomfort around changes desired in our own lives. Guilt is often the motivating factor. Add that to a difficult task (e.g. get a new job, lose 20 pounds in a month, give up sweets, etc.), and then beat yourself up, or throwing yourself over the “resolution cliff”, when you fail or are derailed early on, is something we should all be trying to avoid.

The New Year is a good time to reflect and think about what’s working in our lives and what isn’t, but I’d suggest we should be reflecting throughout the year, not just at the beginning. Resolutions that require change—job, weight, living situation, relationship, etc.—can be very stressful. Any change can be. Adding new stress to your life when you just got over all the stress that comes with the holidays doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.

Instead of resolutions, my husband and I decided to talk about our hopes for the New Year, hopes for our children, hopes for our family, hopes for us as a couple, and hopes for ourselves.  These hopes will require action on our part to make happen, but because we want them to happen, we’re motivated.  Not out of guilt, but desire.

And that’s a much better place to start any New Year.

What are your hopes for 2013?

Hallelujah!

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Are you taking time off during the holidays this year?  If so, how are you planning to relax? Really relax where you aren’t on a schedule, aren’t in charge of something or someone and are able to not have a care in the world about what happened next or when? For me, it’s been seven years since I took a vacation like this, before I had my children.

Vacation is defined as:

  1. A respite or a time of respite from something: intermission
  2. A scheduled period during which activity (as of a court or school) is suspended <a period of exemption from work granted to an employee>
  3. A period spent away from home or business in travel or recreation <had a restful vacation at the beach>
  4. An act or an instance of vacating

I grew up in a family where vacation meant taking a road trip. Our vacations were educational with a lot of adventure and exploration. We would drive from point A to point B, sometimes going eight + hours at a time, sightseeing the next day or two, then get back in the car and drive to the next endpoint and repeat. I learned a lot of these vacations about our country gaining an appreciation for its history, the geography and false advertising. My sisters and I once convinced our parents that we had to stay at a themed hotel that was advertised for hundreds of miles away only to be disappointed when the hotel didn’t quite live up to what we thought it would be – darn billboards!

What I didn’t learn on these vacations was how to relax. I cannot recall a single vacation where we were just laid by the pool or the beach. I cannot recall a single vacation that wasn’t meticulously mapped out or timed. I cannot recall ever feeling bored on vacation.  Basically I don’t have a lot of practice relaxing.

My parents were teachers taking every opportunity to teach us at home and on the road. I really appreciate what they did for my sisters and I, and want to make sure I make the most of every opportunity I have to teach my children through experience too. I also realize that I want to teach my children how to relax and re-energize. I want my boys to know the difference between going to a new place and relaxing (e.g., just because you do one, doesn’t mean you are necessarily doing the other). But first, I have to learn to really relax when I take a vacation myself.

I blogged earlier this year about “Where Did My Vacation Go?” and committed to not repeat that again this year. I’m taking time away from all work, including blogging, through the end of the year. I currently don’t have any to-do list I need to complete while I’m on break. Hallelujah! I want to see what that looks and feels like, and see if I can really relax and re-charge.  I need the experience. I owe it to myself, and more importantly to my kids if I plan to teach them how to do it.

If you have vacation coming up, how do you plan to relax and recharge?

I wish each of you the happiest of holidays and look forward to picking up our conversation in the New Year.

Hope through great sadness

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I had my weekly blog written several days ago and was prepared to post it this morning prior to the tragic events that took place at Sandy Hook Elementary on Friday morning. It’s hard to know what to say when something like this happens. For a large majority of us the world stopped for a while on Friday. A wave of grief came over us for the children and their families involved in the tragic events. It is impossible to comprehend and will never ever make sense what would drive someone to do this.

The holiday season is a time of hope. Hope for seeing the best in each other, and hope for what’s possible. My hope was suspended momentarily on Friday. It’s starting to return, as I see communities coming together, reaching out to each other; to discuss what happened; share our sadness and anger; and discuss possible solutions to avoid something the like happening in the future.

I hope one day violence isn’t the solution for resolving an issue. I’d prefer a world without guns, but in the absence of that hope we will finally figure out how to allow people to bear arms without endangering law-abiding citizens. I hope we will figure out as a nation how to work together as one and solve our problems together.  I hope we will learn how to take better care of each other physically, mentally and emotionally.

I still feel great sadness over the situation in Sandy Hook and probably will for some time to come. But the holiday season is about hope, and I grateful to be feeling a glimmer of it again.

Gingerbread Dream House

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Every year I am amazed at the creativity and great lengths people go to for the holidays. Homes and yards I didn’t pay much mind to before, are now filled with lights and decorations and have my full attention. I love how it brings the streets to life giving off that warm feeling you normally only experience inside someone’s home.

While we decorate our home for the holidays, we don’t hold a candle to some of our neighbors (note: we truly appreciate our neighbors decorations, it gives us a great reason to look out our front windows).  Since meeting my husband the art of making, or more accurately decorating, gingerbread houses has become a tradition for our family.  This was a tradition in his family and we incorporated it into ours.

Decorating a gingerbread house is all about how you envision it in its final state. It’s about making (baking), constructing and adding the final touches. It’s about sugar, lots of sugar; colors, the more the better; and details, a great house has a lot of fine detail like a cat in the window or a wreath on the door.

It’s fun to work on a gingerbread house. There is no judgment or expected perfection. It’s about trial and error, being together as a family and building something together.

I’ve thought about what a real dream home might look like for my family in the future. And while I may fantasize about increased square footage, and the number of bedrooms or baths it may have, I’m reminded I need look no further than my family’s gingerbread house, it’s more like our home than I realized. Each year it never changes in size but does in appearance, and most importantly it always brings us together as a family.  I think it’s the perfect dream house.

What holiday traditions do you have that brings your family together?

Do you know a Dr. No?

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Our youngest son is very advanced. Now, I know you might be thinking all parents think their child is gifted, but I can back up my claim!  Our son really took to the word “no” when he was first learning to talk. He fully embraced the word quickly and has gotten very good at using it. If there was a college degree in the word “no” I believe our son would have his PhD in it already. As frustrating as it can be, I have to smile when thinking about just how good he is at using it.

I say this all, of course, because most parents have experienced their child telling them “no.” There are various methods we might implore to coax our child into complying with our request. We are clear on what we are asking of them, lay out consequences for inaction, and may even throw in bribery (how about a sticker?) to sweeten the pot, and still get “no” for a response.

Taking away favorite toys didn’t work.

Taking away a sticker, or the opportunity to earn one, didn’t work.

Making him go to his room didn’t work.

Talking to him about why I needed his help didn’t work though I believe it helped him better understand why I was asking him to do what he was doing and why I was frustrated.

Finally, at my wits end, I enlisted the help of his pre-school teacher. She reminded me that there are probably a few things going on. First, he wants to be acknowledged for what he is feeling. Second, he wants an opportunity to have his say. That made a lot of sense to me. I think we all want to be heard and all want the opportunity to express how we feel or how we want to respond to a situation. When either is taken away from us that can be really aggravating—maybe just enough to make you want to say “no” every time you feel this is happening to you.

When I ask my kids to do something, particularly something they don’t want to do, I remind them that there are only three reasons why I’m asking them to do it. I am trying to teach them something. I am trying to keep them safe. Or I need their help.  Helping my boys make the connection with what I’m asking them to do really seems to help.

With the case of my youngest, I’ve employed a few new techniques. I work to acknowledge what he is experiencing and feeling. I express more empathy for how he is feeling when he is upset with what I’m asking him to do—to leave playtime early or not  accommodating his desire to go to the store for a treat. I am continually trying to reach my son to help us get to a place where “no” isn’t his go-to response, but saved for situations that really warrant it.

We’ll get there one day I just know it!