mean mama

Air-five, everyone!

We got J into a special ed preschool, where he will be 1 of 12 kids who scored high on the cognitive part of their testing but are mega-distracted. He will get his therapies there, too (physical, occupational, speech), plus we scored a sensory gym visit 45min, 2xweek. All paid for by the City, thank you very much.  And to put the cherry on top, the school is a 5 minute walk from our apartment, and M may also be able to attend in a mixed general ed/special ed classroom (not J’s classroom) hopefully 3xweek. In the end, I’d gotten him into 4 good schools, so I guess all of the gut-wrenching insanity hard work paid off.  Thank God we reached a destination. This process began shortly before I was admitted to the hospital in March, after all.

Of course, being the mean, grouchy sort of mama that I am, and being even more that way today since I’ve (1)been up with MBB since 4:30AM and (2)am about to have to do my least favorite activity ever, making scads of doctors appointments for the kids, I have to mention two beefs I currently have, related to the above topic. I may elaborate in future posts:

- It is almost funny how people act toward you when they hear you have a kid in special ed. It’s like you are suddenly a minority at a very snooty fundraiser. People are awkward and way too accommodating and just… weird. I am certainly not thrilled that my kid needs a special ed setting, but at the same time it means nothing more to me (at this point) than that he will get what he needs to learn and enjoy learning.  People assume that J must not be smart or able, neither of which is true. We are very fortunate that both our sons are smart, but I daresay that parents put way too much emphasis on smarts. What about happiness, ease, self-confidence, compassion, a sense of humor, talent and special ability? I will not put J in a mainstream classroom to have him yelled at for not sitting still or acting out during group activity, at the cost of the things I listed above, just so that I can prove to myself or others (or him) that he is smart just like the other kids.  His smarts will emerge in a supportive and engaging classroom environment.  The main problem would be if I couldn’t find this for him.

- I freaking CAN’T BELIEVE that in NYC kids have to start kindergarten the calendar year they turn 5! My kids will be 5 in the month of November. So let me get this straight: you’re asking me to put preemie twin boys, who turn 5 late in the year, and who are NOT advance for their age, into kindergarten, and then always be the young kids in their class for the rest of their academic career? Jiggawha? Talk about stupid. I don’t know what I will do about this huge, gaping hole of a problem.

Okay, rant over, and back to my preschool-finding celebration. Tra la la, la la!

• Last Monday through Wednesday, I was at my sister-in-law’s house while P went to a conference in a nearby city. That’s three days’ and nights’ worth of managing twin 2.5 yr olds plus an infant on my own. My SIL tried to help, but she has a 4 yr old and a 7 yr old of her own and was packing for a 3-week long road trip. The boys actually slept well, both for naps and at night. Everything in between was pure fun for them and sheer exhaustion for me.

• On Thursday, I found myself on a public bus alone with all three boys headed to see a special ed classroom for J. They wanted to see J’s interaction with his twin, and the baby had to come along too because he had nowhere else to be. It was a last-minute appointment, so I didn’t have a chance to arrange for P to come along. Fortunately, I am drill-sergeant enough these days to handle the boys on bus and subway, and lucky for me the baby mostly slept. Whew!

• Friday I scurried out to observe another special ed classroom in session and then to look for a dress and shoes for a Saturday wedding, baby in tow of course. When I say I had nothing to wear, I really mean it. I had maybe one thing I could have worn if I were 15 lbs. less, pre-baby size, but now nothing.  I did find something fabulous for the postpartum body, at Macy’s no less, but it weren’t cheap. Considering how little I go shopping (pretty much never), I think it’s okay. Besides, I found some fabulous shoes on sale for 19.99, and even the salesgirls were like, “Girl, you got a deal!” Oh, and the baby had a poop blow-out while we were out, but I changed him in my fitting room and nursed him, and even though he was farting so loudly and repeatedly that other customers were most definitely scared away, everything went fine.  It’s just a whole new world with one infant compared to two.  You can do things sometimes.

• On Saturday, we dropped off J and M at their aunt and uncle’s, who live not too far from my parents, and raced directly to a wedding ceremony for a high school friend of mine. After the ceremony, we dropped the baby off at my mom’s house and went downtown to the reception. The next morning, we hung around for an  hour at my parents’ house so that my dad, who had come in late from a conference, could hold the baby for a while. Then we picked up the boys from their overnight, profusely thanked an exhausted-looking aunt and uncle, and headed back to Brooklyn, where we spent the afternoon in a miserable state due to much whining, at-odds siblings, and tired, less-than-patient parents.  But then we went to the grocery store, and things got a wee bit better due to the purchase of strawberries (the boys) and beer (us).

And ohmygod, another week begins. Two appointments today, an appointment and a meeting tomorrow, … mamacita, my energy and patience are wearing thin. I just want this special ed stuff to be decided.  It is a lot to think about and worry about and arrange.  The stress of it is pouring into everything at this point.

Plus, it’s summer, and a vacation would be nice. I’m picturing a hammock, white sand, a  coconut with a straw coming out of it, and happy little boys running around carefree. Probably more a fantasy than anything else (especially the part where I’m in a hammock relaxing while the boys wreak havoc), but a girl can dream.  I hear ukuleles…

Pictured below: My new reality.

Warning: This is a venting post.

I hate to covet.

And really, I don’t covet much. I can check off almost everything on my Want List: a husband I enjoy being married to, three adorable sons, supportive family, cool friends, a job I actually like, and a wide array of personal interests that keep me, well…, interesting.  I feel great about my life situation for the most part, so having a bee in my bonnet about something beyond all this is unsettling and annoying.

Let me say first that I have painted myself into a corner by staying in NYC while in my childbearing years. NYC can be a great place to raise children, but it is not a great place to house children. As my boys are getting older, they are taking up more space. Add in the baby and all of his stuff (and I would bet he has considerably less stuff than 98% of American babies), and you have an increasingly crowded apartment.  We do not own the apartment we live in, which is good since I don’t know how much longer we will be able to live here.

It is not just the space. A new complication has arisen.  J’s preschool needs for next year put us in a difficult position (no offense to J). The good news is that he has already been accepted by one local special ed preschool that many parents like. The complication is that I think there may be another one more suited to his needs that is not within walking distance of us, and that does not provide bus services (because it is new and not officially center-based). The program ends a few hours before my work day ends, so I don’t know how J would get back home or to a daycare. I could have a nanny for the baby and ask her to go pick up J, but that means she’ll have to go on a subway (with a frickin’ transfer, even though it’s only like 2 miles away!) with the baby in tow each and every day, rain or shine, regardless of the baby’s state of health.

So, I started looking at apartments over in the neighborhoods close to the preschool. (Those neighborhoods are also close to my work.)  But the fact is that I can’t really afford an apartment, rent or purchase, over in that neck of the woods unless I want even less space than I currently have.

It is at this point that I become frustrated.

My husband and I both have decent jobs. We do not spend a lot of money on vacations. Our used, 12 year old car cost us all of 3K. Most of the boys’ clothes and toys are hand-me-downs or gifts. And yet. And yet we still can’t afford to live here. Most of the neighborhoods around here appear as middle-class, but behind the casual facade are apartments and houses that are mostly unaffordable to the middle class. That irritates me. I live in an outer borough after all. If I wanted unaffordable, I’d go to Manhattan.

One thing I forget is that while people around me may be middle class, they may have relatives with money to spare. Even more than that, however, I am understanding that the term “middle class” around here does not mean what it does in most other places (duh). And that P and I are on the low end of that spectrum.

Fact is, I don’t mind moving to a neighborhood with lower rent, as long as it is somewhat safe (I have 3 kids, afterall).  The Bay Ridg*s of the world are okay by me. But now that I have this new problem with J’s possible best-fit-school, I’m in a pickle. Had I know this would work out this way, I might have tried to work part time this year or even not at all. But it’s too late for that now.

This complaining-about-NYC-housing post, or a similar one, has probably been written by about a million NYC moms before me. Calgon, take us away from the Big (overpriced, rotten, stinking) Apple.

A commenter on the last post wrote: …he is ADORABLE and the way he sleeps kills me. It makes me want a newborn again sooooo bad. Maybe you can post pictures of him crying?!

Well, at 11+ weeks, 2+ weeks adjusted, it looks like MBB heard the commenter’s plea, because in the last few days he has become quite the handful (sorry, no picture of crying as yet, but coming soon!). He is sleeping a lot less and wants mainly to look around. And, he insists that he have a quality vantage point, which means he needs to be held a lot. If he does not get this, he screams and screams. His bed and his swing are no longer as acceptable to him as they were before. I try to put him in the Ergo or the Bjorn, but he does not like that unless I am walking at a good pace, without breaks. And if I’m sitting, he must be held free-style. He must, he must, he must!

I’m not sure where we’re going with sleeping at night. Typically, he has woken up 2 or 3 times per night and nursed for about 10 minutes (I have really abundant milk and fast flow, so quick nursing is normal for us). He then falls back to sleep next to me until he is out enough that I can transfer him back to his moses basket. Usually about 30 minutes. Two nights ago, however,  he was up once at 1AM for about 90 minutes and then up at 4:30 and refused to go back to sleep.  I thought I’d die when the 6:15 toddler wake-up call came in over the monitor. But then last night, he ate at 11PM, before I went to bed, and then at 3AM for 15 minutes, and that was blissfully it. So there is no pattern at this point. I do remember, though, that with the twins, who were also preemies, we had pretty good nights’ sleep the first couple of months, and then all went to hell as they became more typically developing.

Of course, we are happy that he is typically developing. Typically developing is good. Fussiness is a good sign. But damn.

At least I can remind myself that this is much easier than it was with two at the same time. I am so happy that we had twins first. It’s like having to run a marathon for your first race and then your next race is like a 5K. Not effortless, but way less ridiculous. Granted in real life, I’ve only run a 5K and not a marathon, but I’ve seen my husband run a marathon, and he did not look good at the end. All pale and whatnot. Actually, my analogy is not right, because while we currently have a singleton, we also have twin toddlers to look after. So really, I should say that the second time around would be like running a 5K while yelling at your twin toddlers to stay on the racing course, to NOT GO IN THE ROAD!!!, which would be mighty hard given how I’d be all out of breath from running. Okay, this analogy really stinks. I’m going now. Bye.

Both came out of the oven earlier than they should have but turned out well, if I do say so myself.

I never enjoy the calm after the storm. It just feels eerie to me.

Not that you can call my life calm, exactly, what with the infant and two toddlers living in my home. But you know, this period that is post-NICU/pPROM disaster.  It’s just so… calm. It’s not that I want another disaster- no thank you. I just am not sure what to do/how to feel. There is some aftershock that I can just barely feel, that goes without notice much of the time. But in the quieter moments, it’s there, and it’s creepy.

Life continues as it always does, though. MBB is gaining weight like a champ, and though I think his nose has sounded kind of stuffy, he has not seemed to catch our full-blown cold as yet.  He’s a fighter; I think maybe that is just his nature. I hope so. In addition to our own disgusting germs, I’ve had to expose him to all of New York’s City’s grossosity by having him on the subway or bus every single day this week.  While I am fairly confident that taking an infant and one of two toddlers on public transportation is easier than taking any set of young twins anywhere, it is still a bit messy, and I am tired.  Plus, our destinations have not been thrilling. Most of them have involved finding a school for J or therapy/ doctors appointments.

The most important doctor visit, I suppose, was to my OB for my way overdue postpartum visit. I stopped mentioning on the blog that I’d been bleeding AGAIN, because how many times do people want to hear about one’s faux menses? Let’s just say it’s been an issue. The OB, after my u/s, said that my uterus was not down to its original size yet, and that it is probably just contracting more than average in hopes of getting its girlish figure back. She also noted that having 3 babies in the course of 2 1/2 years can make that process slower. I then remarked that sometimes the days-long bleeding happens after, er, les rapports, to which she answered that it didn’t sound like that kind of bleeding, and, further, that she was mightily impressed by us. Awkwarrrrrrrd.

Also a bit of a stressor to me is my urge to go out with P coupled with the fact that we do not have a dependable babysitter right now. Do you ever just feel like you need that date time with your partner? (By date, I really mean date and not sex.) What do you do when you can’t have it?

At least we are making some bits of progress in the search for a special pre-school classroom for J. There are some openings in local schools, despite what we were originally led to believe. It’s tough, though,  because he scored age-appropriate in the cognitive part of his eval even though he needs all of these therpaies. Also, he is generally a sociable kid, so when people meet him they are not really struck by anything particularly amiss.  Of course, I’m glad that J is smart and friendly, but it makes for convincing people that he needs a special ed classroom difficult. This is typical of a lot of LD (learning disability) kids I work with. Strange how my work life and real life are overlapping so much of late.

I have plateaued at 17 lbs. above pre-pregnancy weight. This time is so different than the last, when I was all but 8 lbs. away by this point. It’s okay, except that I have no clothes that fit.  I finally bought a pair of jeans the other day, because it was either maternity jeans or size 8s, neither of which I was anywhere near fitting into. I tried WWs points system for nursing moms for three weeks, and lost 2 lbs. total. If you have ever been on the program, let me tell you that you get a whole 10 points per day more than what you would normally have, which is a LOT. I was afraid of cutting the points more because I thought I might be jeopardizing my milk supply; however, now that it’s flowing like wine, I think I  might try again. Because I just don’t like not feeling like me, plain and simple.

I have been thinking about my body and trying to appreciate it, though. pPROM (premature Preterm Rupture of Membranes) is so weird.  I look at MBB and am amazed that this currently healthy baby is the product of a disaster pregnancy.  How could my water break at 26 weeks and he still be here as he is? It’s hard to know whether to feel angry at my body for f-ing up or to feel indebted to it for managing to aviod infection for five weeks to sustain the pregnancy safely. But I think I lean toward the latter. I guess I’m amazed that someone whose first month of TTCing ever resulted in emergency surgery of a ruptured cyst and ovarian torsion, and someone who did not seem to take to pregnancy very well, could have three kids only a few years later. A happy ending?  My susperstitious nature makes me so hesistant to believe that it’s true, but the evidence is in front of me.

I am not joking or being sentimental, but rather asking with a messed up, post-traumatic sort of disbelief when I ask this:

Could I really be this lucky?

I have never understood the phrase, “Do your best,” thanks to the severe Germanic work ethic under which I was raised. Even as a young child, my best seemed to mean an infinite amount of effort. Like, if I had a spelling test the next day, should I be staying up for hours and hours into the night to study for it? Would that be my best? What is one’s best based on, and how do you know its limits ? I never knew, and my efforts never seemed enough.

One side of my family suffers from what they call “perfectionism.” They treat it like some completely biologically inherited thing, failing to consider our family’s severe, cultural ethics. Only a few generations ago we were farm people, too busy with work some Sundays to even go to church. I imagine they figured that working hard would get you on God’s good side better than sitting in a pew would anyway. During the months when there was less farming to be do, both of my great-grandfathers were teachers in one-room schoolhouses. Talk about super-productivity. And during the farming months, kids had a full time job of working on the farm.

There is no farm anymore, and yet the severe work ethic remains. Relaxing remains more or less a sin, and that is bound to drive anyone batty because relaxing is a basic human need. My nature has never been to work work work.  I tend to work very intensely and be super-humanly productive for a couple hours at a time and need breaks in between. I have always felt a little bad about taking breaks.

You would think that having preemie twins would have taught me that one’s best is based on a sliding scale. It didn’t. You would have thought that having a child with health issues his first year would have taught me the same thing, perhaps. It didn’t. I did not give myself a break. I don’t mean I worked my fingers to the bone at all times. What I mean is that even though my conditions were rough, I internally lamented when my parenting did not look as good to me in comparison to that of the new parents around me, in real life and on blogs. And 99% of these people had one child - a healthy one. I guess I based my best on my ideals of what I thought good parenting might look like rather than what I could attain.

I could not accept my limits, could not grieve the loss of my ideals and in doing so held on to something unattainable. Many days this took the joy out of parenting.

To make matters more complicated, my thoughts on how best to care for babies were loosely defined. It didn’t help that when I had my twins, a fiery debate about attachment parenting vs. non- seemed to be at its heights. The discussions were largely about co-sleeping vs. crib (cage!) sleeping, baby-wearing vs. letting your child lie around like a slug all day, etc. I think it was hard for me because I wanted to explore these different methods and find the best fit for me and my babies, but having twins made it so much more difficult to try a lot of things out and determine what would be the BEST.  Die-hard APers on their soapboxes, a la Dr. Fears Sears, played to my insecurities, preaching about how wearing your baby and co-sleeping form this bond of sheer trust that will last your child a lifetime and more or less protect him from any sense of insecurity or lack of confidence, directly implying that doing it any other way would result in a basket-case kid. (That argument is still going on, and for the record I think it’s baloney.)

In addition to feeling insecure about my “methods,” I couldn’t be happy with how very hard I worked. In the fog of it all, I was taking a lot of breaks in between dealing with my two babies, looking at blogs and staring at the wall.  And even though I knew I needed breaks, I felt bad about just how much “down-time” I took, not realizing that it was simply a response to exhaustion.  Going back to work saved me. It meant I never had down time! And I liked my work, so it didn’t really matter to me.

You would think that having another baby and being home instead of working would put me back into a bad place.  Wonder of wonders, it has not done that. Maybe this is just a “second child” phenomenon. It’s like suddenly instead of questioning my every move, I just kind of know that it will be okay. I remember I used to worry about letting the boys just sit in their car seats and stare at the CD rack, which was very interesting to them as infants. I thought I should be wearing them as I went through my day (quite a tall order with twins). Now I let MBB sit in his seat whenever, and we don’t even have a CD rack for him to stare at anymore. There are many things like that.

It helps a lot to see that J and M have turned out to be wonderful kids, they’ve turned out to be who they are because of but also despite what I’ve done. As they get older, I take on more and more of a sheep herder role, nudging them towards this and away from that, with increasing distance between us as they skip  ahead. MBB is the little lamb who needs his mother a lot more than the older ones do, but even he doesn’t need me 24/7. Doing my best for him doesn’t mean we need to be attached all the live-long day. In fact, I don’t need any book or method to tell me what is my Best. (And what a bizarre notion that following a recipe  for baby-rearing will give you a perfect child with a cherry on top.)

I have also softened on my self-judging if I am not productive all of the time. When I feel bad about doing nothing, I can sort of self-correct and tell myself it’s okay. I have a lot less guilt on that front this time around. I understand that I have been through a lot and sometimes doing nothing or spending time doing leisure things is part of processing and just plain functioning. In her writing, Ann Lam.ott talks about rest being a component of her spiritual life, and I think that is a really interesting take on it. That relaxation and taking care of oneself by essentially just hanging out could be somehow Godly is in direct opposition to my culture’s notions, and it is a breath of fresh air.

Defining my “best” is a more difficult matter. I still find it hard to accept my limits. Some days, as much as I try to give myself a break, the place is a mess and I am a mess, and my best is seems… well, not what I picture “best” looking like. And it’s also hard when I really am being Super Woman but still cannot affect a situation because it’s in someone/something else’s control (my kids’, administrators’, the weather!). In other words, when I do my best, and I don’t get my desired or expected outcome, I find it hard to accept. I can’t stop, there must be something more/ something else to do, I think to myself. Maybe it’s about letting go of control, letting the chips fall, and then dealing with that situation the best that I can. Whew, that’s going to take a lot of practice.

It’s definitely a process. Once in a while I still get envious of parents who seem really confident and together, because I have a nagging tendency to think that they must be doing some universal Best that I am not. Many times these are one-child families, and I don’t know why I would ever use them as a point of comparison.  At least I am becoming conscious of how ridiculous this is, and ever-so slowly I am learning to avert my eyes and instead focus on what I have. Because when I do stop and really look at my 3-child family, in all of its many imperfections, unreached ideals, and frequent chaos, I am surprised at how good things are, how okay of a parent I am even on my so-so days, and how truly happy my kids seem to be. I need to somehow use this truth in order to temper my unrelenting desire to do better, to do more, to do the impossible, … because it seems like what I’ve been doing is somehow working, even though it doesn’t quite look or feel how I’d imagined that my best would.

with which to gouge my eyes out.

I have been working with “the system” to get J into a special ed preschool for next year. He’s completed 5 evaluations in the past month. As it is, by no fault of our own we began this process very late, so now most of the programs are full. Seems I might have found one ON MY OWN, and you know what? 3 out of 5 of the evals are MISSING from my child’s file, so I can’t give this place that I found ON MY OWN his information.

I have never been one of those people who feels like everyone around her is a freaking idiot and she’s the only competent one, but I am now on my SECOND agency, and I am beginning to feel like that.

Since the baby came home, this process has been the most stressful thing in my life. That means that this is MORE STRESSFUL than recovering from my hospital stay and the baby’s NICU time, more stressful than worrying about my preemie, AND more stressful than taking care of 3 kids.

Pencils please.

First, a pic of my 8+ lb. MBB. He is somewhat calm in this one, but so far he is not a big fan of bath time. I, on the other hand, love giving him a bath, if for no other reason than that Burt’s Bees shampoo bar smells like sheer heaven.

We had a pretty good weekend. Saturday featured breakfast at a cafe with a big patio, and then across the street to the playground. After that, we had a nice, long walk through the park and ended up at the zoo. We came home just in time to collapse/take a nap.

Later that day, P put the car seats into our car. The car is an older sedan, and I couldn’t imagine how we’d fit three seats in there. He contacted the famous Car Se.at Lad.y of NYC with our car make, model, and year, along with the boys’ stats, and she suggested switching the boys to these seats, which we were able to do thanks to the generous Visa gift card we received from my co-workers. Along with the baby’s seat, these new seats fit so nicely and do not look or feel crowded at all. Of course it makes me a bit nervous that the boys are now forward-facing, but it was time, and they were very excited. It is also nice to have them facing forward because M seems to have developed car sickness, even with short trips, and being backwards could not have helped. Anyway, P spent the afternoon putting the seats in. (He is very good at it, especially since we have no LATCH system. With our last car seats, he took them to a technician to be checked after he’d installed them, and she said she only sees people install non-LATCH seats correctly about twice per year, and that he was one of them.) So to celebrate, we all took a ride around the neighborhood. I breathed a sigh of relief knowing that we can actually go places as a family without having a minivan! Not that there is anything wrong with that, but I have no desire to buy a car while we are living in NYC. They get really banged up.

After our trip in the car, the boys watched Harry the Dirty Dog and Office.r Buckle and Glori.a on DVD, and we ordered a pizza. All in all, I think it was a great family day, and really nice for the boys especially.

The only problem with our weekend was that Sunday brought bad colds into our home. The boys had a sniffle before, but now they, and I, have full-blown colds with sore throats. No fun. It wouldn’t be such a big deal, except that the baby sounds a little congested this morning, and that freaks my shit out. All I can think of is preemies=bad lungs=unmanageable colds=hospital stays. Can you blame me? I’ve been to the hospital with my kids once or twice before, you know… . So that is stressing me out quite a bit at the moment.

Other topics to come: potty training (x2!); results of the psych eval (surprise! J is smart but unfocused - not on the spectrum. thanks, but we know.); finding a pre-school for space cadet kids (so un-pc, but that’s how us special ed teachers roll); how unreliable the system is (shocker!); and finally coming into my own as a mom (it took 3 kids for that? Yes.)

ps- omg, yesterday was my due date! as if a due date is anything more than a randomly-generated set of numbers when it comes to my pregnancies…

In January, I ran into a mother of 9-year-old twin girls I taught a few years ago. We were exchanging laughs about life with twins. I always liked this mom. Her girls were pretty rambunctious, not easy to handle, and when I used to tell her about things that had gone wrong with them, she would call them over and confront them right there and then. She was no-nonsense with them but not at all humiliating. Anyway, during our January conversation, we were joking about how having twins made us resort to parenting styles we’d never imagined we’d take on. She confided, “You know, I’m a screamer. I never thought I would be, but I found out I am.” And she was so okay with it, this seemingly nice, calm woman, who is also a special ed teacher by the way.

That conversation made me like her even more. I had really never met anyone who admitted that they ever yelled at their kids before her, except in safety-first situations, like a “Stop at the crosswalk!” type of thing. My mom yelled at me a fair amount, and she more or less apologized for it a few years a go. Strangely, I don’t remember excessive yelling. The things that make me sad about my childhood are my mom not playing with me ever, my parents telling me that I was a negative person destined to be depressed thanks to genetics, my mom hating her body (and passing it on to me), and my dad’s explosive temper that greatly influenced our behaviors. The actual raising of the voices, not so much.

My sons J and M have two very different personalities. M is intense almost to the point of obsessing over things. He is a very sensitive child, and when you give him a time-out for misbehavior, even if you do so in the kindest, gentlest way possible, he breaks into screaming sobs. Curiously, he stops the second his time-out is over, but you get the point. J on the other hand? Not so sensitive. J is interesting. He is a total space cadet, and at the same time he is a very intricate manipulator. You tell him to stop doing something, he will find a different, slier bigger way to do it. He likes to be showy in his misbehavior, and then, once you call him on it, he tries very, very hard to make you laugh, and not in a bashful, apologetic way. …more in a way that makes it easy for you to imagine him as the pain-in-the-butt class clown who the teacher secretly loves, or maybe a future playuh. When we put J in a time-out, he sits there and laughs aloud, rolls around, scoots back and forth, and generally does not care. We keep putting him back ala Super Nan.ny, yet when the time-out is finally over, he often runs right back to repeat the forbidden action again. And again and again.

Do you know what works to get J to take his time-out and the reason behind it seriously? Getting down to his level and raising your voice. “You pushed M, and you are not allowed to push, so you are having a time out. Do not get up from here!” Say it loud, and he will stay there and even cry sometimes (though, like M, the waterworks seem to mysteriously cease the exact second he is released from captivity, in exchange for smiles…). And more importantly, he will not repeat the action. Well, not that day at least.

If I sensed that J was scared by the yelling or trusted us less, I would stop. But for now, it works when others things don’t to communicate the seriousness of a situation to him. To him. It works for J, not for M, so we have no reason to do it with M.

I am not sure why modern parents decided to trust books over their instincts about how to raise their individual children. Is it partly because we are really afraid of f-ing up in ways that our parents did, leaving us scarred, but do not know how to parent differently from them, never having had any other close role models? I never thought I would raise my voice, and I avoided it for a long time, thinking it was just plain wrong as is conveyed in most popular parenting books and sites. Also, I did not want to repeat my parents’ wrong-doings. But what I’ve come to realize of late is that it is the content of what they said, the “Why are you so…”s and the “You are…”s and the “Why can’t you just be…”s that are what echoes still, not the volume of my mom’s speech when I was testing my limits.

I hope my meanness will pay off someday, because I am really trying to do right by this boy. If not, I will humbly and apologetically say I was wrong when accused. And comply to his demand that I pay for his therapy.