SWM parenting....

So before I had a kid I had lots of parenting ideas... They mostly revolved around clear consistent boundaries, always following through, never fight over food, and stay calm and positive at all costs.

When I had a kid I did my best, I really did... The kid was born with bulls horns and an uncanny ability to milk every weakness until the tears flowed... my tears that is.  I. underestimated the extremes of sleep deprivation and the uncomtrollable rage that wells inside when your kid yells for you through the night repeatedly, exactly 15 minutes after you have finally and arm numbingly soothed her back to sleep.  You see it's just long enough for mum to desperately slide into slumber...and then ....waaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh there she goes again.
So yes, I let her cry it out at times....don't lynch me... the alternative was unthinkable and  involved either a straight jacket or hand cuffs.  And you know what? It bloody worked, damn it.  Tut tut all you like - the choice was either neither of us ever got a decent nights sleep again and went rapidly mad, or she cried it out once or twice and then slept through the night until sickness or such opened the door to her believing that mummy should be on tap and within arms reach all night or the world was ending.  And no - bed sharing was not an option.  She grunted like a randy pig and kicked like Beckam all night.  Fail.

So I had a pretty happy well adjusted kid who thought the world of me and I was pretty firm and clear most of the time, used the dreaded cry-it-out and time-out techniques when I had to, and we all got along pretty well in life.

Then I stumbled across Positive Parenting literature... I read up and, just as it intends to do, it convinced me that time-out was tantamount to torture, parents who let their kids cry should be hung drawn and quartered in the town square, my home was no better than Guantanamo Bay, and of course I was destroying any chance of my kid ever being happy in life....
Ye gads.... So I wholeheartedly embraced the approach.  I jumped on board with the ways of respecting your kid to within an inch of its life, soothing rather than setting limits,  responding to the feelings behind the behaviour (I see by the fact that you just punched me in the face that you are feeling frustrated with me...do you need a hug?) NO consequences under any circumstances (punishment is child abuse) NO rewards (poison carrots!) NO saying "well done good job..." (teaches external praise seeking rather than internal self satisfaction), encouraging free and unlimited self expression at all times.....And basically your life must revolve around anticipating and meeting the needs of your child so that they never have to experience the harsh realities of the world... ("Don't prepare your child for society, change society to meet your child's inner needs").

But.... to my honest surprise... It failed miserably. My sweet angel descended into new and horrific depths of evil. Quickly working out that there were no longer any consequences to fear, her inner needs became expressed loudly and clearly and involved the world entirely revolving around her passing whims - oddly enough - or she screamed the house down.  She cottoned on very quickly to exactly who was in charge here.  Relying on my child's inner sense of self responsibility turned out to be a mission of futile frustration...and no-one was there to sooth my bloody anger! In vain did I turn to the Positive Parenting advice pages only to be confronted by the scores of other poor parents writing in with exactly the same experiences as me... Their children were monsters too.... And the answer, according to the hallowed gurus? Must be a food allergy.... Or just don't take your kid out in public.
Seriously.
The answer to the child who demands every piece of candy in the supermarket or they chuck an almighty lay down tantrum? Just don't take them to the supermarket - they are telling you they are not ready for that experience...
Holy crap what kind of fantasy land do these people live in??
Clearly this approach can only work if you are a privileged married/coupled middle class family who can afford to give up everything other than devoting yourself full time to meeting your little Hitler's every desire.

I struggled on, feeling more and more guilty and like a failure...I couldn't socialise or take my child out in public without living in fear of the next screaming fit. I dreaded bed time or bath time or any time when I had to convince her to do anything contrary to her inner self expression... And my friends started looking tense in the shoulders when ever she entered the room...

It took an old dear friend arriving to visit and informing me in no-uncertain-terms that I was breeding a demon to shake me out of my cycle of despair and denial. Oh I was cranky at her for it at the time, but it shook the veils from my eyes and I realised my kid was miserable, I was miserable, we were spending all our time fighting or avoiding fighting, and the future was looking bleak. It was around this time that I became very very sure that another child would be about as desirable as performing open heart surgery on myself without anaesthetics.

So...I stopped.... And I realised that the true art of parenting lies not in doing what you are told, but in listening to your kid and doing what works, what makes you both happy...In our case Positive Parenting could kiss my stress-expanding ass.

I am a single working mum. I work because I have to, but also because I passionately believe that what I do makes a difference in the world and I want my kid to be passionate about changing the world too... I want her to see that adults work, follow their dreams, have a balanced life of different commitments, and that she is a part of a big painting of life that is a populated landscape not a single pointed portrait.  I also want her to understand that the world does not exist for her amusement, it is not always fair or the way we think it should be, and if she behaves like a selfish beast no-one will want to play with her.

So in case I ever forget again, in case I get sucked into someone else's theory, I thought I would write my own parenting tips.  These are the some of the things I've worked out that work for me, for us... They may not be politically correct and they may or may not be found in any parenting book... they may even be just slightly tongue in cheek, but they work for us....for now... And if they stop working we will deny they ever did move right along...nothing to see here....

So - TOP TEN PARENTING TIPS FOR SINGLE WORKING MOTHERS :

1. Bribery is good. If I believed in such deities I would be tempted to say bribery is the god of single working parents... The deity would have many many arms full of lollipops, chocolate, new toys, star charts, ipads and ice cream.

2. All doors should have really really high handles... Anyone can slam a door but only a mummy can open them again. This is essential for mummy to have a few precious minutes to breath instead of exploding.

3. If in doubt, always lie. The correct answer to "Is that the ham I like?" is always "yes".

4. No-one is too big to beg...in fact, only big people are allowed to beg....Never let it work for the little people or you will want to scrape the word pleeeeeeeeeeeeeease out of your ears with a rusty nail...but a please please please get out of the car sometimes does the trick...maybe she misguidedly thinks that if she gives in to my pleases it will make me give in to hers... Sucker.

5. The match is over when the kid chucks. No matter what happened to cause the fight, vomiting always wins. Never give them the thing that was wanted of course, never that, but at least a whole lot of hugs and kindness....I have an easy chucker... It's like playing the joker card... Trumps all.

6. The joys of FFT...flexible follow through... Some days you need a LOT of last chances up your sleeve if you are going to walk the fine balance between world war three and anarchy.

7. Love love love the good stuff.... Total positive reinforcement... I do not care if my kid runs the risk of growing up needing external reinforcement to feel good about herself... I will NOT stop telling her she has done a fantastic amazing job, she is hugely talented and a superstar, and she will one day rule the world - at least until bedtime.

8. Toddler Tennis Tips... parenting a toddler is a game, never forget it.  Its a tennis rally in which both the little person and the big person are dancing around trying to get a ball past their opponent.  You may rally around deuce for a time, but at the end of the day whoever hits the better curve ball wins.  I am a good enough sport to admit this.

9. Parenting is a battle of wits.  I've never stretched my imagination, innovation, creativity and inventiveness this far before - and trust me, I'm pretty inventive in life.  Its a constant process of trail and error to find a win.  Celebrate the wins and high five yourself... you earned it!

10.  Ask for help when you need it but don't expect to get it.  Ask the kid to cut you some slack on a bad day.  Sometimes it works.. .and if it doesn't - they were warned!

11. Its ok to have the shits.  Kids are not stupid - they know you love them and think they are incredibly amazing, if you have told them a million times (see 7).  They can cope when mummy gets pissed off.  Mostly they know they deserved it.  Seriously.  By 4 years old - my kid knows when she is pushing my buttons or leapfrogging over the boudaries of common decency... and she knows that when she does that I get C-R-A-N-K-Y... such is the nature of it.   She makes the choice... self responsibility and all that - love may be unconditional but happy smiling faces are not.

Ok so that is 11... get over it.  Mums are inherently unfathomably amazing and utterly imperfect.  Deal.

Oh and one more... iPads rule.  Full stop.

Trickling back baby....

Hello mojo! Well... You are a somewhat wasted diminished neglected version of your former glory... You look like you could really do with a decent feed and a hot shower...
 but still, it's so nice to see you again!!
I've missed you so...
What made you finally return to home and hearth?
Did I speak the words aloud and break the curse?
Did I find better balance in myself so that there was space for you?
Is it because the end of this journey is looming and you realised I wasn't going to make it over the line without you?
Was it just your time?
Or was it the Zumba?
In any case... I'm so happy to have you back in my life, even in your reduced current form.
I've really been enjoying the recent yummy healthy home cooked meals...
And I'm loving actually hitting some of the to do list....
I'm even enjoying getting to bed at a decent hour rather than hiding myself in meaningless distractions!
Stay with me mojo... Lets roll together down the next path of adventure and see where it takes us.
I'm so much less me without you!
Xxxx

Burn out

So I am burnt out...
Burn out is a bitch.
It sucks the life right out of you
It sucks the will to achieve out through your eyes leaving bloody trails of good intentions
It makes everything and anything more interesting that what you are supposed to be doing... cereal boxes suddenly detail fascinating essential facts for life, but you can't remember what you were supposed to be doing anyway so it doesn't seem to matter.
Cleaning becomes really interesting and subsumes all other priorities
Facebook becomes your best friend, judging by time and energy commitment made
Burn out fogs the brain, makes it hard to remember just what was so important that you decided to work at home to make up for time that slid into the mirky swamp during the daylight hours.
Priorities pop into mind at random moments, inspiring more guilt than motivation, only to dart away as soon as the computer screen refreshes.
Tiny routine tasks take superhuman effort
You can't imagine how on earth you used to get stuff done.
Burn out - you suck.

Keeping up my end...

So it's Wednesday...day three of my "finding my fitness groove" self challenge... And I am thrilled to say that inner determination and self commitment, my old friends, have popped in to visit. I'm working on convincing them to stay a while, move in, unpack...
Three days, three work outs, 150 push ups, calorie controlled diet and no alcohol or chocolate...
Sore but happy...
Yay me.

This week's challenge...

So I am attempting to get my fitness groove back on...
Last week was a shocker on the health front...stress induced yes, but stress didn't shove all those chocolates into my mouth and wash them down with red wine... That was all me baby...
So ....this week the bar has been lifted.
My challenge this week :
1. No alcohol
2. 1200 cals a day
3. 30 min cardio work out every day
4. 300 push ups over the week.
Oh and no chocolate I think goes without saying... No? Ok then NO CHOCOLATE...take note self, you are being blitzed.  Luckily I have now eaten all of the chocolate and drunk the open wine.
So it's the end of day 2 of the week... And Tuesday evening sees me chocolate free, 1.5litres of water consumed today, alcohol free, and having done two work outs and 100 push-ups.
Not too bad if I do say so myself!
Yay....feeling groovy....
Now to keep up the good work given that I have also chosen this week to come down hard on the little person sleeping coming into my bed at night....so sleep deprivation has already commensed.
Wish me luck!

Peek-a-boo!

Tick tock tick tock...

I sat down to write a post about how fast time is flying as I pass the milestones along the way to coming home...
And as I started to write it felt so very "de ja vu" like... And I realised so many of my posts have been about tick tock time passing toward the next stage of life..the next big thing... So much of my life spent anticipating, planning, wondering, nervously awaiting, almost always with some degree of ambivalence.... A letting go of past and moving towards the future unknowns.
Is this normal? Is this how other people live? Do other people's lives settle into comfortable routines or do they too live life rolling from one big event to the next? Do others live more in the momentary interests of the day? Or do they too experience the vast lands of limbo between one adventure and the next?
I have lived my life in chunks...chunks of experience, chunks that feel like very different lives all sticky taped end to end like a Christmas streamer.  Most of the chucks have been about 18 months to two years long... I have seen this pattern emerge clearly. Two year cycles and then on to the next reinvention... Maybe it's connected to having travelled the world in a back pack at 18 months old, maybe I am repeating infant patterning... Or maybe it's a natural cycle... Six months to settle into a new thing, six months to a year to live fully within it, and six months closure and exit to the next thing...

Some days this is the very best I can do

Mother's Day

Tomorrow is Mother's Day... And for the first time ever I'm not celebrating it in any way...my own mother is cruising the Greek islands....we figure she is celebrating enough without a token bunch of flowers from her tropic bound off spring. I'll be sending her my thoughts, but I'm not sure I could top a beachside seafood feast in a village in Crete even if I tried, and I am sure she will be indulging in yet another of those tomorrow.
And my own little four year old angel has turned feral this week... With impeccable timing she has launched another phase of boundary testing rebellion. I know it will, like all the others, pass and peace will be restored...but it's not a shining mummy week I have to say. Spending this morning sitting on the ground outside the fun factory (closed for private function) while she wails that I am not to touch her and refuses to stop pressing her face against the door to the forbidden land was not one of the mothering highlights of my short but mostly happy career in the role.
So I'm going to simply pretend Mother's Day doesn't apply to us this year. We will try again to visit the fun factory (ball pits, slides, trampolines...all the joys of life in one room) and I shall enjoy her smiles as my Mother's Day gift... Maybe I will eat a piece of cake.... And that shall be my day.
Happy Mother's Day to all my dear friends who will be celebrating this year, may your toddlers be angels of happy compliance, may your cups of tea not grow cool, and may you have uninterrupted toilet time :)

Living to prevent dying regrets....

I read this article today and it got me thinking... am I living the life I truly choose? What regrets will I have on my death bed? What would I do differently if I was going to find a way to reach the end of my life without regrets?   I've inserted my reflections into the article... Coz you know, it's my blog and I can do that...

 THE TOP FIVE REGRETS OF THE DYING:

Bronnie Ware is an Australian nurse who spent several years working in palliative care, caring for patients in the last 12 weeks of their lives. She recorded their dying epiphanies in a blog called Inspiration and Chai, which gathered so much attention that she put her observations into a book called "The Top Five Regrets of the Dying".

Here are the top five regrets of the dying, as witnessed by Ware:

1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
"This was the most common regret of all. When people realize that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honored even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made. Health brings a freedom very few realize, until they no longer have it."

Am I living a life that is true to me, or am I living other people's expectations? 
I find it almost impossible to really know... I've spent a lot of time on this question in my life...but the expectations of others are so tightly woven into everything I have ever known about myself, and are so much a part of how I think about what is meaningful in life, that its impossible to tease out what is just me and what is internalised... Maybe this is because I actually agree with a lot of what I internalised from my parents and my buddhist upbringing. 
Do I feel that I am living authentically, in a way which is not in discord with my personal values? Yes... Do I easily get caught up in pleasing others and trying to meet their expectations of me? Yes, I do.  Do I actually think its a good personality trait to try and make others happiness a priority?  Yes I do... But where does the balance lie? That's the trick question... I think it comes back to listening to whether pleasing others requires compromising authenticity or not...if it doesn't, it's ok...if it does...negotiate, make conscious choices about when to give in and when not to...
That's the point I have reached on that journey...

2. I wish I hadn't worked so hard.
"This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children's youth and their partner's companionship. Women also spoke of this regret, but as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence."

I don't think this one applies to me... Sure I work hard, but I believe passionately in what I am doing and why I am doing it...and if anything, I'm a little lazy and could work harder if I really wanted to be proud of my achievements and have fewer regrets...

3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.
"Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result."

I'm getting much better at this... It's taken courage, but I'm getting there. No longer do I allow myself to feel silenced by the fear of others reactions to my true feelings. I've learned by doing that out is almost always better than those festering in feelings...

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

"Often they would not truly realize the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying."

Now this one I do need to get better at... I used to be much better at this... Age has narrowed me...I've become much more introspective, introverted, less socially oriented and engaged with others. This is given, of course, that used to be Extreemly Very Social... So it is relative.  I have also, flip side, realised that I have friends who I trust I can pick up with at any point like no time has passed...true friends who I may not speak to for years but that I know are still in my life and will always be. I miss them in between though, and I'd like to connect more...

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
"This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realize until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called 'comfort' of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content, when deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again."

Now this one I give myself about 70% on... Nothing like a four year old to remind you about the silliness and joy of life... But could I do more of it? Yes ... Could I spend less time "parenting" and more time playing? Yes, I could... I think the thing I need to work on there is being more present in the moment... I spend too much time with my mind elsewhere...multi-tasking...distracted from the fun of the moment... This is the meditation I need to do more of. An when I have practiced staying present in the moment before... I really do have more fun!

What's your greatest regret so far, and what will you set out to achieve or change before you die?