Buzz Light Year: Hey, you wanna go for a fly?
Optimus Prime: I can’t. I don’t have wings.
Buzz Light Year: You could pretend your arms are wings!
Optimus Prime: Hey, I have a great idea! I saw some wings at the store!
[insert wing attachment sound effects]
Optimus Prime: Okay, let’s go! Wanna go to the park?
But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).
This is a pretty foundational concept in the Zug Haus, though some of us (…ahem…) don’t always execute it gracefully. As Believers we give grace because we have been given grace – though usually I demand grace for myself and justice for others.
Ruthie is an apple that did not fall far from the tree.
Much like me, she is quick to turn hot, and quick to turn cold – saying hurtful things she doesn’t really mean, then smoothing it over with a quick apology. Over and over and over again.
(Did I mention she is my carbon copy?! It’s frightening, really.)
“I’M NOT GONNA BE YOUR FRIEND ANYMORE!” and “YOU’RE NOT INVITED TO MY BIRTHDAY PARTY!” are the popular declarations.
My patience has been enormous in this area. I guess I have a superhuman load of compassion for Ruthie’s anger, and spend a lot of time in prayer begging God to help me help her figure out all that passion before she’s, say, thirty-five and swimming in postpartum hormone surges.
(That was not fun).
My patience ran out just a little bit tonight – partly because I’m PMS-ing, but mostly because she told ME I wasn’t invited to her birthday party.
“OH YEAH?!” I screamed back at her up the stairs. ‘IF IT WEREN’T FOR ME YOU WOULDN’T EVEN HAVE A BIRTHDAY PARTY!”
I just snorted my wine as I read back through that last sentence. It’s so nice to be able to laugh at myself. I wanted to throw her out the window in the moment, but after the fact? It makes for a hilarious line in a blog post.
Anyway.
I hauled out the Big Guns tonight while she was in her time out, and I read the above verse to myself. All through this struggle with her temper we’ve talked about love being kind, that love never gives up being a friend, that we love others even when they frustrate us – most of which is found in I Corinthians 13.
And while all that is true, it’s really first and foremost about Jesus.
So when she came downstairs I read her this verse, and I asked her if Jesus waited until we were nice to him before he died. She laughed. Of course not! was her basic answer.
We talked about how the people Jesus loved were mean to him, but he still loved them, and that’s how he wants us to love others.
A little while later Ruthie and Thomas were squabbling over a game of Candyland, and Ruthie blurted out, “I’M NOT GONNA – ”
She slapped her hands over her mouth and looked at me wide-eyed. I smiled and winked at her, and she smiled back.
And then it hit me.
“Ruthie,” I said, “I can tell Thomas was really frustrating you. Instead of yelling at him about not being his friend anymore – because I know you don’t mean that – why don’t you just tell him you’re really frustrated?”
And you know what? She told Thomas she was really frustrated.
Sometimes I feel like the most dominating aspect of being a parent is rather CSI-like, always following the trail of clues past all the bullshit to find out what the heart of the issue is. It’s a hair-pulling experience, but when I finally crack the case it’s always liberating to feel like I know what makes my daughter tick, and how to help her connect all the dots about who Jesus is.
One of my epic fails as a parent is trying to dictate what kind of children I have. I spent all of Ruthie’s early years trying to find a toy – JUST ONE – that she would play with. I never had any luck with that. She always preferred my pots and pans over her toy kitchen, the pens from my desk over her crayons, and my kitchen utensils over the official Play-Doh utensils.
Birthdays and Christmas are hard. I want to buy them toys because it’s easy. The grandparents want to buy them toys because that’s what they love to do. But what do I end up with? A play room full of abandoned toys and a missing toy box.
That’s right, they play with the box.
Yesterday my kids played with a pair of wooden chopsticks from the local Pho restaurant for half an hour. They were drumsticks, they were door keys, they were pencils. Never did they take the chopsticks down to the $50 deluxe fisher price kitchen I bought for them off Craig’s list, and pretend to eat Pho.
The day before that they were entertained for the entire evening with one chopstick, the box from a case of canned tomatoes, and two plastic cups.
I know this probably means my kids are brilliant and creative, but I seem to be lacking this vision. I just want an object to be used FOR ITS INTENDED PURPOSE. Life must be ORDERED and CATEGORIZED.
Then one day I read this post on the PBS Supersisters blog. Here’s the excerpt that was my AH-HA moment –
1. Decide what kind of players (i.e. mess makers) you have. My kids tend to take one kind of toy out at a time and play with it on a grand level. If it’s tinker toys, there are exactly one million pieces and projects everywhere BUT they are all the same thing.
When Madeleine and Carter come over, all toys are fair game. Everything is integrated into the play. There are ropes tied to tinker toys, dolls sitting on tinker toy built swings, forts, stuffed animals with tinker toys coming out of their ears…etc. This is a different cleaning animal all together.
My nephew Ethan is completely uninterested with the tinker toys but has very happily dumped the toys so he can turn the box that held them into a car. Or maybe a sled to use down the stairs? Pure physical genius I tell ya.
All of these players might require different clean up habits.
1. We can tell Josiah and Jack they have to clean up the first mess before they take the next toy out.
2. I try to suggest a clean up sooner (after I know they have exhausted the resources) with Madeleine and Carter so we aren’t overwhelmed by a bigger mess tomorrow.
3. Ethan needs different resources all together. Plenty of “non-toys” available might curb the dumping or just go with it and pick up throughout the day. Dumping is a big developmental task requirement for some kids and calls us to parental surrender at times.
I know. Crazy, huh? THERE’S MORE THAN ONE WAY TO DO THINGS.
As I explore more of my own control issues, I’m realizing just how much I instigate the tension in our household. Instead of observing how my kids are wired and going with that, I’m attempting to dismantle and rewire them to my own liking.
Embracing who they are and facilitating their imagination has turned everything around. When they raid the kitchen drawer full of colorful kids plates and cups I tense up for a minute, thinking about how there will be no clean plates to eat lunch from. Then I remember God blessed me with two hands and the ability to use dish soap. I take a deep breath and happily watch them make a mess.
Works for them, works for me!
—
For other Works For Me posts, visit Rocks in my Dryer.
Up until Ruthie entered kindergarten, all her friends were the kids of my friends. We’ve had our biting incidents, our fights over toys, and the he said/she saids with these friends, but I always know the other kids well, and I have the luxury of knowing my parenting style is consistent with my friends’ style.
Enter Kindergarten, Land of the Catty Girls and Cat Fights.
Sending Ruthie “out there” among kids I don’t know, whose parents I don’t know, for long stretches of the day where I cannot press my ear to the door for a listen is… challenging.
And time consuming.
Today I spent an hour sorting out an incident on the bus that I didn’t witness, and that I technically didn’t have an hour to spend sorting out. But alas, other things must be put on hold so my daughter and I can walk through the stuff of life.
I have Ruthie’s story, and I have the bus driver’s story. They don’t line up exactly, but I feel I have enough of the story to deal with it. I stick to the larger issues of Ruthie’s heart – how does she respond? What should she have done differently? How can she be more loving, even in conflict?
What I find, is if I stop what I’m doing and sit with Ruthie on the couch, giving her my full attention, she finally lets down her defensive guard and tells me the truth. I have created a safe environment for her, not a distracted, second class environment.
Sometimes the dishes can (and should) wait.
Reconciling with children is much different than with adults. When Bryan and I get into a fight, it often takes several long conversations to cover all the rabbit trails of baggage that manifested itself in the actual fought upon issue.
I get to explain my feelings. I get to lay down the foundation of how I came to respond the way I did. I (usually) get to bring closure to each and every point of contention.
Not so with children.
Their nanosecond attention spans do not make an exception for long-winded apologies. Their simplified reasoning skills do not grasp the complex nature of complex relationships. Often when I get caught monologuing, Ruthie will sigh and say, “You’ve been talking for a long time!”
Lately I feel like Ruthie steps off the bus ready to pick a fight. Like a passenger in a car fishtailing toward a tree on the side of the road, I brace myself for 3:30. Sometimes we miss the tree, sometimes we hit it dead on.
Today we wrapped ourselves around it.
If I don’t have something EXCITING, and DELIRIOUSLY FUN, and WILDLY ENTERTAINING waiting for Ruthie when she comes home, she becomes angry. Not just disappointed or whiny, but downright angry. Right there at the bus stop she’ll yell and stomp her feet and declare she’s never going home again. I’m so boring.
I understand her anger. It’s my anger. I gave it to her when she passed through my body. We like to get our way. We like to be in control. When she falls and skins her knee she cries dramatically, but then she throws something or kicks the ground. Stupid rocky ground! she’ll yell. Falling down means she’s not in control, and that makes her angry. I know this, because I made her. She is from me.
I lost my temper with her today. I feel defeated. Frustrated. Hopeless. Sometimes I feel like I’m raising a monster; sometimes a sweet angel. Sometimes I’m the one who’s a monster. My emotions and hormones can’t hold me intact as I bounce back and forth from moment to moment, first drawing her close, then pushing her away.
Today I happened to be hormonal, so I cried. Right there in front of her. I apologized for losing my temper, of course, and then I just started babbling about nonsense. I was mostly talking to myself – talking myself down off that cliff of despair. But she sat quietly and listened.
Ruthie looked sweetly at me with her round eyes and big cheeks, and then? She leaned forward and began to wipe my tears away with the bottom of her shirt. She was so tender, dabbing gently over each tear, wiping softly the trail it left.
I feel this could be one of our greatest moments of communication, a connection, a breakthrough. She is beginning to understand me, and I am able to tell her how I feel. It’s all going to be okay, just like when Bryan and I work it out.
Ruthie finishes dabbing my tears, and I smile at her.
She sits back in her seat and opens her mouth to speak. I think she is going to say something incredibly profound for a five year old (it’s been known to happen).
In her sweet, compassionate, kind voice, she says, “Can I have some chips?”
I’m having the time of my life this year with a three and five year old. We go on adventures and treasure hunts, we have conversations, we joke around, we act silly and make things together. I’m sure some of this relative peace is because I’m not so crazy in the head as I used to be, but I also just think kids this age are my thing.
Take tonight, for instance.
Bryan is out with a friend, this evening, so I’m on kid duty all night. As is customary in the Zug Haus, Thomas and Ruthie eventually start fighting while I’m cleaning up in the kitchen. This is a sample of what I often hear:
“I WANT IT!”
“I HAD IT FIRST!”
“BUT IT’S MINE!”
“YOU’RE SO STUPID! I’M NOT GONNA EVER BE YOUR FRIEND!”
[screaming ensues when Thomas pulls Ruthie’s hair].
Feeling tired, I let this go on for awhile, hoping it will resolve itself. But it never does. Kids don’t fight fair, and therefor kids will never resolve arguments on their own. They need direction. They need to practice reconciliation. They need a road map to get them through the conflict.
I come into the living room where they are and sit them both on my lap in my favorite chair. And then I do something quite unexpected… to all of us. I ask Ruthie how she is being unloving to her brother.
Of course she starts shouting at me about Thomas pulling her hair, but I interrupt. I didn’t ask what Thomas did to you, I say. I asked you how you were being unloving to him.
Again she starts complaining about him trying to take away her game, but I interrupt and keep her on track. I say it’s easy to point out everything Thomas is doing wrong, but this time I want her to think about it differently. I ask her again, how are you being unloving to Thomas?
I shouted at him, she says.
Yeah? What else?
I wouldn’t let him play with me.
Hmmm. Thomas, how are you being unloving to Ruthie?
She wasn’t sharing her toy with me!
I know that, but how were you unloving to her?
I pulled her hair and I shouted at her.
Hmmm. Sounds like neither of you are loving each other.
I’m sorry Thomas.
Sorry Rufie.
Thomas, do you want to play the game together?
YEAH!
—
I kid you not, this is how it went down – word for word. Ruthie stood up, was completely sincere in her apology, and offered to share the game. Turns out I’m not fucking them up so bad after all, and that all our rote conversations about apologizing and reconciling and being kind are actually sinking in.
It took me a long time to get here, to this place of patience and selflessness where I can stop what I’m doing and walk them through a situation. It’s much easier (and much more convenient to my own agenda) to yell at them and send them to their corners, or to perhaps to redirect their focus by turning on the tv.
But at my core I’m a discipler, a mentor. I draw from real life experiences to help others see things in a different way. When Bryan and I fight, I’m always quick to point out his faults and the way he makes me angry. But Jesus calls us to a love of a different kind – a love that extends to even our enemies (real or perceived) – because that kind of love is unexpected to a foe and much more persuasive than a fight.
My kids are not too young to learn these lessons, and it’s only through real life conflict I will have the opportunity to teach them. If I ignore the conflict, I’m ignoring a teachable moment. It took a radical shift in my thinking and priorities and parenting style to embrace these lessons for myself, but as it turns out, this agenda is way more engaging and rewarding than the self-serving one I was creating on my own.
Silly me.
In the weeks leading up to the start of Kindergarten, I worried, I fretted, I questioned whether Ruthie would make it through the day without a nap. Without one she’d always slogged in the afternoon, and freaked out at bedtime from being over tired.
But after the first week of school it became clear: turns out all these years Ruthie wasn’t tired – she was an extrovert trapped in a family of introverts.
School freaking energizes her.
Despite a long day which starts with waking up at 6:30 every morning, she is ON FIRE when we pick her up at the bus at 3:30.
CAN WE GO TO THE PARK?
CAN WE GO TO THE CUPCAKE SHOP?
WHO’S COMING OVER?
CAN WE GO TO [INSERT FRIEND]’S HOUSE?
Whatever the request, if I say we’re going home to our boring house with nothing to do there is screaming, crying, and rending of garments – right there at the bus stop in the middle of my community’s main street.
So now at the point of my day in which I’m the sloggiest (made-up word), I need to make sure I’m rested and properly charged (read: have been alone) so we can go to the park, or the cupcake shop, or to a friend’s house. Which is fine. I can do it.
It’s just something I NEVER saw coming.
Thomas spent the night at a friend’s house this weekend, and I sent Bryan out to read peacefully in a quiet place far away from All That Is Undone here at the Zug Haus – which of course left Ruthie and I to ourselves for a GIRLS NIGHT IN.
I rented High School Musical from Netflix, and I think you know how that went.
Here’s what we watched on the big screen:
And here is what it did to inspire Ruthie:
I mean, I knew she would love it, but 24 hours later she has watched it – oh, I don’t know – a dozen times? And of course she has a crush on Zac Ephron, whom she affectionately refers to as The Boy.
I can’t say that I blame her. I may or may not have obsessed over his IMDB page for about 20 minutes until I realized I was a Mary Kay Letourneau After School Special waiting to happen.
Despite the fact Target has High School Musical paraphernalia throughout the store, it never occurred to me someone Ruthie’s age would be able to follow it. I just assumed it was for high schoolers. I was surprised when a friend mentioned she’d watched it with her five year old, so I thought I’d give it a try.
If you have little ones at home with Very Dramatic Tendencies, I highly recommend High School Musical.
Personally, my favorite character is Ryan, the brother from the brother/sister duo who have starred in all the school musicals since kindergarten. He’s the Niles Crane, the Kramer, the hilarious side kick who steals the show with – in Ryan’s case – very coordinated hat/shirt combinations.
The Internet continues to ask me how Ruthie’s first week of kindergarten is going, and I am derelict in responding. My sister was in town last week, we had a holiday, I’m having some sleeping issues, and I’m reading a book I can’t put down. My apologies to The Internet for leaving you hanging in the balance.
But it gives me warm fuzzies all over that you continue to harass me via twitter, IM, and email – I’ve been writing about Ruthie for so long that it sometimes feels like our little girl is growing up. Someday when she reads back through my archives looking for ammunition to bring her therapist, I hope she runs across this post and realizes that I love her so much it’s contagious.
As far as school itself is going, Ruthie is much more tight lipped than I expected her to be. Though I don’t know why I’m surprised by that – every Sunday I pick her up from her Sunday school class and ask what she did. Nothing, is always the response I get, and I get the same when I see her after school.
Though I do get the lowdown each day on a new friend she’s made – a girl in the other kindergarten class she met at the back to school bbq. They are not in the same class, but it turns out they ride the same bus home. Today when I met her at the bus stop Ruthie was hysterically insisting I board the bus to meet her new friend, and since I clearly can’t do this there were great fits of rage right there on the sidewalk with the backpack a-flyin’ and the feet a stompin’.
Thankfully we recovered from that quickly, and moved on. But what can I say? She’s a social, hospitable girl with clear, unbendable, expectations (sound familiar?).
Speaking of riding the bus, at the 11th hour she had a panic attack of sorts, and began crying the night before she was to ride the bus for the first time (I drove her in on the first day). I don’t want to be alone! she kept sobbing. Drive me in the car! I don’t necessarily have a strong…how shall we say?…compassion quality to me, but this was breaking my heart.
It also came as a huge surprise since she’s been talking about taking the school bus since she was three years old. But I could tell she was tired so I told her we would talk about it in the morning. And after some brief hesitation and one crying spell, by the time she put her sweater on she was back to being excited.
Though she did hold my hand all the way up to the second step of the bus, and only let go when my arm wouldn’t go any further – and I thought this was very sweet.
Putting her on the bus was much more emotional for me than when I took her into class the first day. I’m used to door to door delivery – it’s what I did for preschool, it’s what we do for Sunday school, it was no big whoop. But when that big orange bus swallowed my baby up whole and drove around the corner? There was not only tears, but there was actual sobbing.
My heart swelled with love and pride, but also with fear that she was driving away from me and never coming back. I wanted to wrap her up in my sweater and whisk her away, take her home, and curl up in my bed for a good snuggle. I wanted to snap my fingers so a cartoon maid would appear and sing a happy working song while doing all the now-insignificant chores that always seem to make me so grouchy and emotionally unavailable.
I knew this time would come, and I knew I would feel exactly like this – which is why I was able to get home and move on with my day without pouring myself a margarita (barely).
Ruthie? What are you guys doing up there?
Nothing…
Ruthie, what are you doing?
Nothing!
No seriously, what are you doing?
(pause)
We want some alone time, Mom!
That’s fine, but what are you playing with?
(pause)
Naaahhhh-thiiiiiiing!
So if I come up there I’m going to find you sitting on the bed picking your nose?
(like a teenager) Mom!
—
At the sound of my footsteps on the stairs I hear them scramble, and when I enter the room Thomas is in the closet and Ruthie is hiding under her desk. I am feeling a strange deja vu tingle that takes me back to when Ruthie hid under the bed after cutting her own hair.
What are you doing under there? I ask with measured control.
She slips out from under the desk and sits on the floor, defeated.
I’m pretending to be a face painter, she says.
I know there was a day – hell, even maybe an hour ago – when I would have blown a gasket over such a thing. For some reason I’ve never been able to see antics like this as basic childhood curiosity and mischievousness, but rather as a personal assault on my authority and control.
Even though I wasn’t happy there was also green marker on the carpet, the walls, and the night stand, it’s all washable, it’s all perishable, and it’s all meaningless. It’s just stuff. Stuff that sacrificed itself for the creative genius of a child who likes face painting at the fair.
As Ruthie waited tentatively for my response, I felt such freedom in my soul as I smirked at her, then smiled, then laughed as she laughed. I never realized graciousness could fill me with such joy.
The other day as we were trying to get out of the house, I was caught up in the usual fussing around that happens when one person is trying to get three bodies going. Ruthie kept asking me to tie her shoes, but of course I was not in shoe-tying mode, I was in snack packing mode. Ruthie persisted.
Mom, can you tie my shoes?
Mom, can you tie my shoes?
Mom, when are we going? Can you tie my shoes?
After a few minutes of me putting her off, she became quiet in the next room. That is, until she came screaming into the kitchen, literally. She screamed “MOM!” as if Scout had just swallowed Thomas’ head.
“IS ANYONE HURT?!?” I said, my heart racing.
“NO, BUT MOM– ”
“IS ANYONE IN DANGER?!?”
“MOM, NO! But– ”
(sighing) “Then why are you screaming at me?”
“BECAUSE I TIED MY OWN SHOE!”
I looked down at her shoe and a little scream escaped my lips, too. What a big girl. She’s only had lace-up shoes a few weeks, and taught herself to tie them by watching me do it for her.
It’s not very often that I recognize the positive aspects of Ruthie’s tenacity. I should remember this story on those days when her tenacity pushes the buttons of each and every one of her friends. I should remember this story on those days when her tenacity drives Thomas to the brink of insanity. I should remember this story on those days when Ruthie is a walking Wall of Obstination.
She is still finding her way, but I pray she learns to use her tenacity for good more often, and not evil. With that kind of ferocious focus she can solve the world’s problems.
Of course, I captured her accomplishment on video:
You must have known it would only be a matter of time before one of our offspring had presence on the internet. Of course I’d always assumed Ruthie would have a blog, but I didn’t think it would happen until she was old enough to read. But in conversations via Twitter with Daisy of Kids Blog Too! I realized it worked just as well for Ruthie to tell me what she wants to say while I type.
I see several benefits in Ruthie having her own blog:
So if you have a moment, please check out Ruthie’s blog, Roo the Day, and leave her a comment. I wanted to get her up and running in time to report back about Kindergarten – which she starts next week – and I’d love to read back to her some of your comments.
I’m so not in the mood to blog anything, and I haven’t been doing much writing either. But I thought I would just mention that I am NOT a 75 year old man with gout. I saw a podiatrist on Monday and it turns out I have tendinitis, which likely developed as I overcompensated for pain due to plantar faciitis.
Wait a minute, maybe I am a 75 year old man…?
Ruthie starts full day kindergarten September 2nd and I’m simultaneously partying hard and dying inside a little. While I can’t imagine what my life will be like again with just one kid at home who sleeps for two hours every afternoon, I’m also realizing I’m setting her on a conveyor belt that will continue to eke her away from me little by little, year by year, day by day.
I’m not sure my heart can take it.
So we’ve been spending our last free days together, loving each other as we usually do – by yelling and screaming and slamming doors. Okay, you got me. There’s other stuff, too, happier stuff. Usually.