Attitude, Not Latitude

My parents, like approximately 38 other members of our family, were teachers.  When it was time for them to enroll the oldest of us in school they, like most parents, went through a little hand-wringing about where to send us to school.  Eventually, Mama made a visit to the elementary school nearest to our home and she was struck by how happy the children looked.  The decision was made and my brother, sister, and I spent all of our education in the County schools.

As an educator, I get asked the following question repeatedly:  What is the best school to send my child?  No one is ever satisfied with my answer.

Some people are really asking me what the school population is like.  They are more interested in whether or not their child is going to be “exposed” to the parts of our society that they would prefer their kids never come into contact with.  If this is your major concern, I would recommend a cult, convent, or fortress.

Some parents are concerned that their child’s giftedness will go undernourished in an environment where teachers are overwhelmed with the demands of the other students.

There is also that element of society that is worried their child won’t be part of the cool kids.  They want to make sure that their child goes to a school where they can be top dog.

Some parents are looking for a school that is more like Summer Camp or Disney World.

Some parents seem paranoid about bullying.  Unfortunately in these situations, no matter what school their child attends, their child is going to be bullied.  Why?  Because the parents’ perception of and preoccupation with every schoolyard spat is going to sound like bullying to them.  I do recognize that bullying is a valid problem but I also recognize that it can happen anywhere.

The success that my siblings and I had in life had very little to do with where we went to school.  It was my parents that made the difference.  We were read to at an early age.  On long car trips, my parents read us the classics and we were equipped with paper and pencil in the backseat.  When I struggled a bit with learning to read, my dad sat down with me at night and had me practice sight words with flash cards.  We had a study hour every night whether we had homework or not.  Our report cards were scrutinized and we knew we were personally held accountable for our grades and our behavior at school.

My parents never thought it was the school’s responsibility to enrich my life or to teach me morals.  They accepted this as their own responsibility.  I took swimming lessons, dance lessons, piano lessons, gymnastics (short lived – see blog Happily Unbalanced), and art.  We traveled, camped, water skied, and roller skated.  We were taught morality at home and at the church of our family’s choice. 

There was no teacher blaming or school blaming and, if there was, it was not openly aired in front of us.  There were a couple of circumstances where our parents had to act as advocates for us.  We knew that if something was going on at school that was just not fair then we could tell Mama and Daddy and they would look into it.  In other words, they tried to help, not fix!

Before hearing my advice on where to send your child to school, first take these things to heart:

Accept your role as your child’s primary educator and stop passing the buck.  If your child struggles with a subject, make it your business to make sure they get help.  Let the dishes sit in the sink, get out that homework, and help (please don’t do it for them).  If your child needs enrichment, then it is your responsibility to make sure that happens.  If you want your children to have strong morals, then live the type of life you want them to emulate because they are watching you all the time!  Stop expecting the school to take on your parenting role.  Despite the bragging that we educators sometimes do about the amount of hours a day we spend with your child, we can never replace you.

Trust your child.  Let your child experience their own life and keep your need to hover at a minimum.  You cannot protect them against every bad thing in life.  When you try to, you are giving your child the message that you don’t trust them to be able to handle their own difficulties; thus, your good intentions of trying to protect your child are actually very debilitating to them.   

Trust your school.  The field of teaching does not attract lazy or greedy people so you have every reason to believe that the people who are working with your child are there because they believe in the school’s mission.  Your child’s teacher is not your enemy.  If there is a concern, go straight to the teacher first and talk about it.  Also, the purpose of your visit should not be to assign blame but, rather, to find a solution.

So when you consider where to take your child for their education, my advice is…                       (drum-roll, please)… the most convenient one. 

Now you see why no one likes my advice.  Everyone is convinced that they must go through extraordinary means to make sure their child gets the best there is to offer.  But what I think is…

It’s about ATTITUDE, not LATITUDE.

 

My old elementary school, where happy children still attend.

 

The Looney Tunes of Life

One thing that stands out about my generation is that we grew up along with television.  Like most baby boomers, I remember black and white television and having only 2 or 3 channels to watch on T.V.  With so few choices, boomers have common childhood memories about favorite shows like I Love Lucy, The Beverly Hillbillies, Gilligan’s Island, and Looney Tunes.  We knew all the theme songs then and we still remember them now. 

As with television, the musical scores of many movies of our generation like Star Wars, Love Story, and Jaws, elicit an emotional response for us.  Then and now, movies without a musical score are unusual.  One of the most frightening films that I saw as a child was Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 movie, The Birds, which had no musical score.  One of my favorite films is Cast Away (2000, starring Tom Hanks), which has very little musical score.  The absence of music in this film underscored the isolation that the main character felt while stranded on an island.  Like the television theme songs, the musical scores to movies become a part of our cultural history.

Nearly all suspenseful movies use a soundtrack to build our feelings of anxiety and fear as we watch heroes and heroines enter frightening situations.  We sit back in awe of how they saunter fearlessly into their homes, put away their belongings, and delay hitting the light switch.  As an audience, we are in disbelief that the character does not realize that danger is eminent.  Soundtracks in movies alert us to many things in life:  when people are falling in love, when action is about to take place, when the moment is sad, and when things start to move towards the happy ending.

It’s a shame that life has no musical score.  It would be nice to be able to rely on the theme of Jaws to play when there’s a shark in the ocean.  Some romantic music swelling in the background to signal the development of true love would also be nice.  But, alas, we’re destined to go through life with no warnings or signals; we just have to muddle through and figure it out as we go along. 

On June 25, 2012, my husband and I were at the grocery store, tackling the chore of shopping in our usual divide-and-conquer way:  James in one direction with a cart, I in the other, meeting in the middle at the cash register.  We were almost finished when my phone played out the Looney Tunes ringtone, letting me know that my brother was calling.  He told me that an ambulance had been called to take Mama to the hospital.  I was not too terribly alarmed by his call because this was something that had been happening relatively often over the past couple of years.  I told my brother that I would check out our groceries and head to the hospital to meet the family. 

A few moments later at the cash register, my Looney Tunes ringtone went off again.  This time it was my brother’s wife, telling me that Mama was not breathing.

If I had ever written a soundtrack for my life, I would never have chosen the theme music of Looney Tunes to be the last thing I heard before hearing the news of my mother’s death.

The story of our lives follows no script and has no predetermined soundtrack.  We choose what we say and do, we react to situations, we make decisions (belabored or impulsive), but mostly, life just happens.

Looney Tunes may be more appropriate than I thought.

 

My brother, sister, and I in Disneyland, 1973 

Looney Tunes Theme

I Promised Rainbows, Not Rose Gardens

The first time I went through a really difficult time in my life, my parents bought me a copy of When Bad Things Happen to Good People, by Harold S. Kushner.  I’ve long since forgotten exactly what Rabbi Kushner said in the book, but have never forgotten what it meant to be given a book with that title.  By giving me that book, I learned from my parents that they believed I was a good person but that I could still expect some bad things to happen in my life.  This lesson from them was more important to me than the contents of the book.

Whether it is the death of a loved one, a divorce, a bankruptcy, a violent crime, a job loss, a natural disaster, a terminal illness, war, or a special needs child, a lot of us are going to ask… why?  I’ve heard a lot of people give various answers to this conundrum.  Here are a few:

• When God closes one door, He opens another.
• There’s a silver lining in every black cloud.
• God never gives us more than we can handle.
• What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

My favorite:  I beg your pardon… I never promised you a rose garden. 

This comes from the song, Rose Garden, performed by Lynn Anderson, written by Joe South, and popular in 1970.  There was also a novel entitled I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (1964) written by Joanne Greenberg.  To my knowledge, there is no relationship between the book and the song other than the time period when they were written.  However, like the titles, they shared a similar theme.

I think this is the question we should be asking:  Why do we question the bad things that happen?  It is obviously just part of life.  As the song said, “Along with the sunshine, there’s going to be a little rain sometimes.”

We are a culture that spends a lot of time and energy trying to prevent bad things from happening to us.  Whether it’s the newest health fad, a new safety regulation, or a sign in a public restroom with diagrams about how to wash your hands (really?), it’s all designed to prevent the inevitable from happening.  Because the truth is, you can wash your hands and still get sick.  You can have the safest vehicle on the road and still die in a traffic accident.  You can be a nun in a convent and still get raped!  Why do we continually try to make ourselves safe in an unsafe world?  I submit this for your consideration:  fear in our lives makes us want more control.

Every day when I go to work, I pass a gated community.  Every day when I sit on my back porch, I see the same gated community.  If I were to drive into this neighborhood, I would need a code at the gate.  Or… I could just open the gate in my backyard and enter it.   By the mere fact that all a person needs is a pair of feet to get into that neighborhood, the people living there clearly are not any safer because of the gate.  But they feel safer.

The estimates of privately owned guns range from 190 million to 300 million.  There are many reasons that people own guns but one of the most prevalent is personal protection.  I know lots of people who own guns but I don’t know any of my friends who’ve had to use one yet in order to protect themselves.  The gun itself is not a very safe thing to own, given the number of accidental shootings there are in the US per year.  The gun owners have balanced the risk of having a dangerous thing in their house with the risk of being unarmed if they are threatened.  The gun, though a dangerous thing, makes them feel safer.

There are many things that we do to make ourselves feel safer:  home security systems, airbags in vehicles, helmets, Germ-X… It’s truly an endless list and, yet, we still get hurt, we still get sick, and we will all die.  This is not pessimistic; it is pragmatic.  I have no intention of getting rid of my seat belts or my security system, and I will still warn my husband that the floor is wet.  But in thinking about the fear of bad things, I’ve had two separate but equal thoughts.

Thought #1:

Fear and our desire to have some control in our lives is part of what leads to victim-blaming.  When a person is in a car accident, we want to know if they are speeding or if they were drunk.  When a woman is raped, many want to know what she was wearing, what she was doing, who she was with, or whether or not she was drinking.  This subconscious need to find fault on the part of the victim makes them feel safer because then they can console themselves by believing it won’t happen to them.  Their internal dialogue tells them that they are safe because they dress conservatively, don’t go out at night by themselves, or drink.  If these guidelines always held true, nuns would never be raped and neither would middle-eastern women who wear burkas. 

If it is your natural inclination to want to figure out what the victim did wrong, you might not be able to control those thoughts.  However, you can control what comes out of your mouth and what you write in your newspaper or post in social media.  Try some self-control.

Thought #2:

In varying degrees, bad things will happen in everyone’s lives.  The struggle is getting through it but on the other side, there can be a reward, not just in Heaven, but here on Earth.  The wisest, most empathetic people we know are often the ones who have had the hardest lives.  In this sense, we might think of hardships as a blessing.  A good life is not necessarily flawless but a positive outlook on it is essential. 

Look for the rainbow, not the rose garden.

Taken from my parents' front porch, after a storm.

(Author's note:  I posted this on the same day that the tornadoes hit Oklahoma but it was pure coincidence.  However, below is a link to a blog written by Reverend Ian Punnett concerning what he believes is the underlying message to one popular platitude.)

My Take: Keep Bad Theology Out of Oklahoma

Rest in Peace

 

In music, a rest is an action. If we do not take the rest, it could create disharmony.

If we apply this to our lives, we view resting as something active that we do to enhance our lives and remove the dischord. You aren't being lazy; you're doing what you must to bring harmony to your life. 

Give yourself permission to rest and nap. It is just as important for mental and physical health as eating organic foods and exercising.

 

My advice to mothers, those who work outside the home and those that don't... create more harmony in your life by taking a rest. 

 

Rest in peace...

 

Harmony.

 

 



Happily Unbalanced

I have fallen twice in just a month which confirms what I have always known:  I have poor physical balance.  Two or three weeks ago, I was putting the dogs up for the night and noticed that they needed water.  As I reached over the baby gate to pick up their water bowl, I fell, knocked over their gate and made a big crash.  Poor Dandy was afraid of the gate for about two weeks after that.  Then just a few days ago, I was cutting the grass in the backyard and fell again.  I was backing up the push mower and tripped over my feet.  I suffered a very bad fall on my elbow and ended up going to Urgent Care for x-rays.  Thankfully, I did not have a broken arm! 

Not having good physical balance has caused me only a few limitations in my life.  Although I’ve tried snow skiing, I have not been successful because I cannot maintain balance getting off the chairlift.  I always fall getting off the lift, and it is extremely difficult to get back up on a flat surface when you are on snow skis.  Riding a bicycle, which most people do quite easily, is very hard for me.  Once I start to get wobbly, you can guarantee that I will end up on the ground.   Ask poor James who watched me not once, not twice, but three times fall on the Creeper Trail when we went riding last year.  Each time I got back up and got on the bike.  However, after that many falls, I was too shook up, banged up, and exhausted to finish the trail. 

Long ago, I accepted the fact that I had poor physical balance.  It never hurt my self-esteem because I was good at other things.  I compensated for lack of balance with physical strength, stamina, and courage.  I took pride in the fact that at least I tried… heck, I more than tried!  I went down the Creeper Trail, wrecked three times, and got back on the bike three times.  It was James that suggested that maybe I might have had enough for one day.  Did I give up on physical balance?  No, I just accepted myself.

There is one type of balance, though, that I have always tried to achieve:  balance in life.  Okay… I admit it… I’m not good at having balance in my life either.  I’ve tried to balance career, family, housekeeping, exercise, cooking, hobbies… I’ve not been able to do it.  Whenever I’ve talk to someone about life’s pressures, they always talk about balance… “we must achieve balance.”

A couple of months ago, I started getting back into painting.  It had been a long time since I had painted and my sister was so happy.  She said to me, “You might not realize this about yourself, but you go through a lot of phases and I like this phase.”  You see, the thing is this:  I want to do it all, I can’t do it all at one time, so I have to have these “phases.”  I would love it if in one day I could keep up with current events, sing, read a good book, paint, write, sew, teach, talk to all my friends and family, have fun with my husband, and still manage to keep a clean house, an immaculate lawn, a perfect body, beautiful skin and hair, and be romantic when I went to bed.  This is, sadly, a partial list.

It can’t be done.  It’s like trying to balance too many plates. 

Not to sound judgmental, but it seems to me that the people I know who feel they have achieved balance in their lives just don’t seem to be doing very much.  They’re balancing only a few plates:  work, home, and a hobby.  I think that is wonderful for them, but not all of us would be satisfied with a life that is so narrowly focused.

A very successful young woman that I know recently wrote to me and said,

“Housekeeping has become a much bigger stress to me in the last year. I started taking on projects after my regular work hours and between work and my hobbies, I could not keep my house clean. One of the worst things for me is for my friends, family, or boyfriend to think that I am a poor housekeeper.”

This particular young woman has a teaching career and, when she leaves work, she usually heads out to work on a community project.  She gives, gives, gives all day and then goes home and stresses about whether or not her home is clean enough.

But is it any wonder?  I tried to research the amount of time that the average woman spends on housework.  I didn’t find the answer to my question, but I did find articles and blogs about how women’s waistlines are increasing because they are doing less housework!  Are you kidding me?  Do we really measure a woman’s success by their waistlines and housekeeping skills?  I really don’t think so, because how many eulogies have you heard where they praised a woman’s waistline and clean house?

Where’s the blame?  Maybe we’re just still stuck in the Superwoman phase.  Perhaps it’s the media, our peers, or even Pinterest that we’ve allowed to make us feel that we just aren’t doing enough well enough.  Let me say this:  the responsibility of being satisfied with our lives belongs to each of us.  The Blame Game does no good.

About 10 or 15 years ago, I had a friend that asked me:

·         As a teacher, did I feel that all of my students had to make a 100% on all of their tests?

·         As a teacher, did I define a child’s worth by how they did in my class?

Well, of course, the answer was NO.  Prodding further, we discovered that I was satisfied with an 80% grade from a child who I knew was putting forth maximum effort.  I also valued all of my students as people, even if they failed every single subject in my class.

That day I realized that I applied a stricter grading scale to myself than I did anyone else.  I was expecting myself to ace everything I did in life… not just pass, but excel!  No one else expected me to be perfect; I did this to myself. 

Balance and perfection both seem to be unattainable goals unless you lower your standards.  I could achieve a closer approximation to perfection if I only worked very hard at one thing that came easily to me.  I could achieve balance if I only tried to balance two things.  But if I want my life to be full and challenging, there is going to be less perfection and balance. 

I am working on being happily unbalanced.  Feel free to join me.

I Wouldn't Have It Any Other Way

The summer before my son, Jacob, became a senior, he and I packed up my Volkswagen Beetle with camping gear and headed out on a 20 day cross country road trip.  We traveled through 20+ states, visited the Rocky Mountains, Mount Rushmore, Devil’s Tower, Yellowstone, Zion National Park, Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, and Mesa Verde… even a little place in Nebraska called Car-Henge.  We had a plan:  camp as much as possible, see as much as possible, have a great time, and get the most bang for our buck.  This was in 2001, and we managed to spend less than an average of $75 per day on gas, sleeping, eating, and doing cool stuff.   I had $1500 budgeted for the trip and, despite having to replace a camera, we came back with some of that cash.  We even managed to listen to Jacob’s entire summer reading list on tape while driving.  MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.   

All the places we went, all the people we met… and we were still the only traveling mother-son combo out there.  I wasn’t surprised and, yet…I was, because we did meet lots of fathers and sons.  So… what’s the big deal about mothers and sons doing things together? 

I did not go see The Guilt Trip (2012, comedy) and it might have been a wonderful movie.  However, I was opposed to seeing it just because it bothered me that the mother used guilt as a way to spend time with her son.  I take spending time with my son just as seriously as I take spending time with my daughter.  This motherhood gig:  it’s important work!  Once you’re a mother, there is no quitting, resigning, or retiring. 

 

“A daughter’s a daughter for all her life.

A son’s a son, until he takes a wife.” 

Have you ever heard this old saying?  I’ve heard it a lot and, because I’ve recently been thinking about motherhood, it keeps popping up in my head.  Jacob hasn’t yet “taken a wife” (an expression that implies that he acquires a possession), so perhaps I don’t really have a full handle on the meaning of the saying.  But this I believe:  I’m not losing my son just because he gets married. 

I was out mowing my yard yesterday and, as usual, did a lot of thinking.  Jacob is my go-to guy for all things having to do with home and car maintenance.  When I needed a new mower last year, Jacob went in search of one that would be right for me: self-propelled, easy to start, and easy to maintain.  He taught me how to use it and gave me some tips for cutting my grass.   

I suppose some moms would rather for their son to just come over once a week and mow the yard for them.  I think that is a fine arrangement and works for many people, but it wouldn’t work for us.  One of the many things that my son and I have in common is a very strong need to be independent. When Jacob teaches me to do things for myself, he is showing me respect.   

Okay, so you know I have a point. 

Jacob does not objectify me; I am not merely Mother.  He sees me as a person that just happens to be his mother.  I absolutely am not perfect mother material but I did, accidentally, do some things right. 

·         I let my son see me as strong.  That doesn’t mean that I never crumbled in front of him because I sometimes did.  But he also watched me put myself back together.

·         Instead of trying to control him, I’ve respected him.  This means that I don’t call him out on everything he says or does that I don’t agree with.  His journey is his; I trust his judgment.  You might not agree with this “live and let live” philosophy, but it has worked for us.

·         I got out there and did things with him.  Dads do this with their sons to cement their relationship.  Well, this mom did it, too. 

·         When I ask him for help, I often let him teach me how to help myself.  Who wants to be a burden on their children?  Not me.  Who wants their son to learn that women can’t do this or that?  Uh… not me! 

I recognize that it can’t always be easy to have a mother who is so upfront and out there.  Recently, I hugged Jacob and told him that I was sorry he had such an independent, feminist mother. 

He said, “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

We even used to work in the same school system!

Just a Piece of Paper

I’m sure you’ve heard people say, “It is just a piece of paper.”

I think about the pieces of paper in my life that have meant a lot to me:  college diploma, driver’s license, titles, deeds, books, and one certificate that documents that I crossed the Arctic Circle.  Whereas it is true that paper will just lie there and let you put anything on it, the significance of what is written on that paper has real value.  If I burn my birth certificate, it doesn’t mean that I was never born.  Likewise, the value of my diploma is the documentation of an achievement of a goal. 

Recently the mother of a child with Autism posted about her child’s disappointment at a school award’s assembly.  The child had not received an award and had wept.  The parents were understandably heartbroken for their child and had tried to console her by reminding her (as many of us have often done), that her real achievements were more than a piece of paper.

Why are we so concerned with these pieces of paper?  It has to do with recognition, something we all crave.  We know that we’ve worked hard, but we still want others to recognize it.  This is totally natural.  It is part of the human condition to desire recognition, validation, praise, or just plain feedback.  So it should be expected that a child with only a small number of years on this Earth should be very confused.  The school makes a huge display of pride in the relatively small number of award recipients.  Then the parents tell their children that it’s okay and no big deal that they didn’t get an award.  It’s pretty confusing, right?

I’ve taught in schools for 32 years and I have never felt entirely comfortable with the Almighty Awards Assembly, especially at the elementary and middle school levels.  I’ve seen too many heart-broken children to believe that their sacrifice in self-esteem was worth the elevation of another child.  But I also know from my experience that the problem is complicated.

If schools are about academics, then shouldn’t we be recognizing those who achieve at the highest level?  If we bring up every child onto the stage for an award, then how is the award special?  If we spotlight our brightest students, won’t this make the other students want to work harder?  These are the most common arguments given for awards assemblies.

Let’s do some debunking.

Are our schools about everyone scrambling to the top?  Or, are they about everyone being the best that they can be as individuals?  I’ll bet that if you ask educators, they will tell you that they only want their students to be the best that they can be.  Second, do we really think a child devalues their award just because everyone else got one?  If you’ve spent any time with children then you’ll know that they only notice when they don’t get something.  (Think:  If a child gets a sucker, do they care that the rest of the class got one?) Last, have awards assemblies been shown to improve overall student achievement?  I have not researched this but I can tell you from my experience that the answer is… NO.

So if schools wish to promote individual achievement, then how do school-wide awards assemblies fit into that plan?  If they don’t, then what can we do?  Come up with another way!

 

After all, it’s just a piece of paper. 

 

What a piece of paper can mean.