Welcome to the January Carnival of Natural Parenting: Learning from children

This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama. This month our participants have shared the many lessons their children have taught them. Please read to the end to find a list of links to the other carnival participants.

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It almost goes without saying that my son has taught me about living joyfully, living in the moment, and living as though every detail in the world were worth exclaiming over, lessons I forget and re-learn daily.

But what he’s really taught me is about me.

It’s not that I was new to introspection before he came along. I’ve written plenty about the various roads I went down pre-child to deal with my issues and get healthy in my head and heart: talk therapy, craniosacral therapy, emotional freedom technique, flower essences. I always considered myself a pretty self-aware gal, almost annoyingly so.

But. Then I had a child. Plenty of books talk about needing to get in touch with yourself in order to be a good parent. And plenty of people probably find ways other than parenting to really explore their own complexity. Still, there is something special about having a being that is a product both of your nature and your nurture, something that screams: “So that’s who I am!”

Some of the things I’ve realized about myself have been surprises, but most have been frightening confirmations.

I talk a lot. This I knew. But hearing the never-ending stream of narration from my toddler then preschooler’s mouth. It’s not just a phase. He’s using my words.  My gestures.  My inflection. I even titled my first blog “Mama’s Mouth” because he had a replica of mine, both in shape and in spirit.

I am messy. I do not live a ritualized, orderly life. My son has inherited and/or learned to copy my hoarding tendencies and my failure to put things away in a logical place when we are done with them. Yes, this is the opposite of a Waldorf approach, and yes, we’re working on it.

I am judgmental. Not in a scary way. But when I hear him — with a finger-wag in his voice — spouting about how someone biking without a helmet is not safe or that someone shouldn’t eat a certain food because it has chemicals, I cringe. He’s been learning a bad/good dichotomy from me that I don’t want to be a part of our lives. Safety is cool, and good nutrition is great. But telling people what they should and shouldn’t do? Not so much. The more bossy his four-year-old self gets, the more I remember being that obnoxious girl in preschool who told her classmate, “There’s no such word as ‘buyed.’ It’s ‘bought!’” Notice I said classmate, not friend. My haughty ‘tude never made me all that popular.

I am sensitive. The more I write, the more it sounds like I’ve been stunted at the developmental level of a four-year-old. But when my son stomps his foot, or says he wants something NOW, or falls into sobs on the sofa, I know just how he feels. I can remember doing the same thing at his age, and I’ve spent the intervening 33+ years trying to figure out more appropriate ways to channel the same frustration, sometimes more successfully than others. My heart broke like a Christmas ornament when he came home bleeding from a sledding accident, telling me his friend’s parent said “it would be the most fun run” and that the third parent on the scene was supposed to keep them safe but didn’t. I’m not sure when or how I’m going to get over watching his faith in adults drip out of his mouth.

I am a singer. Never a soloist, I’ve still always been someone who likes to say it with a song. I remember lyrics like nobody’s business, and making up new ones is a specialty. I’d forgotten this until Junior came along, and it was like I rediscovered an old friend in my new and returned singalong self. Now that he’s doing the same (all. the. time), I’m reminded to call on that self with his baby sister, who tends to get me more often distracted than channeling my inner Ani DiFranco.

I am loving. The sincerity with which my son tells me he loves me at least once a day gives me a clue that, despite all of the above, I’m not doing so bad. He seems to get supreme joy from sharing his feelings, making his love known. That won’t always be the case, I’m sure, but I don’t think he’d say it if he didn’t hear it, really hear it, from me.

I can make a positive difference. The baby is the best teacher of this right now. When I’m just muddling through, trying to get dinner made or get the boy run around while it’s still light out, I catch my five-month-old daughter just staring at me with her big blue eyes. All I have to do is smile at her, and she’ll smile back. Wiggle my hips and she’ll giggle. Clap my hands above my head and she’ll laugh.

Then, and when she’s crying in her dad’s arms but stops the instant mine take over, it’s those times I know that I’m not just a broken mom passing her bad habits and quirks onto her children. I’m someone who can create joy, soothe spirits, warm hearts.

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See also this post about watching parents lost their cool at the zoo; at the end, I list some books that discuss how learning about yourself helps you become a better parent. And how to deal with all those issues you carry from your own childhood so they don’t become your kids’ issues, too!

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What is the most profound — or the simplest — lesson you’ve learning from your child, or just from parenting?

Or a lesson from a parenting book that made the biggest difference?

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Visit Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama to find out how you can participate in the next Carnival of Natural Parenting!

Please take time to read the submissions by the other carnival participants:

(This list will be live and updated by afternoon January 11 with all the carnival links.)

• Affection — Alicia at I Found My Feet has finally become a hugger and kisser, now she has someone sweet and small to snuggle with. (@aliciafagan)
• Learning from Daniel — Amy at Anktangle hopes that she and her husband will always be open to learning from their son. (@anktangle)
• Kids Cultivate Awareness of Universal Truths — From forgiveness to joy, Amy Phoenix at Innate Wholeness has become aware of deep truths that come naturally to children. (@InnateWholeness)
• What the Apple Teaches the Tree — Becky at Future Legacy has learned about imagination, forgiveness, and strength.
• A Lesson in Slowing Time — Bethy at Bounce Me To the Moon revels in the chance to just be with her baby.
• Learning From My Children: I Am So Honored — WAHM Chante at My Natural Motherhood Journey is learning to choose tea parties over work. (@MyMotheringPath)
• P-A-T-I-E-N-C-E — Now that she’s a mother, Danielle at born.in.japan is finally learning about a personality trait she lacked. (@borninjp)
• Top 5 Homeschool Lessons My Children Taught Me — Deb Chitwood at Living Montessori Now shares what she learned from homeschooling her (now grown) children. (@DebChitwood)
• Learning to Live in the Present By Looking to the Future — Dionna at Code Name: Mama finds the patience to be a gentle parent, because she knows how fleeting childhood really is. (@CodeNameMama)
• The watchful Buddha boy — At Dreaming Aloud, they are learning to cherish their thoughtful, sensitive child in a action-driven, noisy world. (@DreamingAloudNt)
• What My Children Taught Me — Dulce de Leche’s children have taught her to value herself for the wonderful person and mother she is.
• Lessons from the First Year — Having a child made Emily at Crunchy(ish) Mama realize that her decisions affect more than just herself. (@CrunchyishMama)
• Lessons from Loss — Erica at ChildOrganics learned so much from the love — and loss — of her sweet Bella, five years ago. (@ChildOrganics)
• The Socratic Baby — Erin at Multiple Musings has so-called “identical” twins to serve as a daily lesson in nature vs. nurture. (@ErinLittle)
• Learning to be a Mother — Farmer’s Daughter learned the type of patience that enabled her to calmly eat one-handed for months and change clothes seven times a day, before noon. (@FarmDaughter)
• A Few Things Being a Mom Has Taught Me — Heather at Musing Mommy shares the curious, hilarious, and sometimes Murphy’s Law-like tidbits we learn from our children. (@xakana)
• I Feel You — Motherhood has taught Jamey from At the Bee Hive empathy, and it extends beyond just her child. (@JameyBly)
• Lessons From My Child… — Jenny at I’m a full-time mummy shares the inspiring ways she’s learned to expect the unexpected — and have a camera ready! (@imaftmummy)
• My child is my mirror — Jessica Claire at Crunchy-Chewy Mama has seen herself in her children – and it’s not bad. (@crunchychewy)
• There is enough to go around… — Kellie at Our Mindful Life learned that love doesn’t diminish when it’s shared.
• Learning From Our Children, Every Day — Kimberly at Homeschooling in Nova Scotia, Canada is continually inspired by her children. (@UsborneBooksCB)
• Life Lessons From My Children — Kristen at Adventures in Mommyhood has learned that every slug is fascinating, doing the dishes is fun, and sharing a banana is a delight. (@crunchymamato2)
• Things I’ve Learned From My Children — Kristin at Intrepid Murmurings uses pictures to share what she has learned from her children. (@sunfrog)
• Beyond the questions lies the answer — Lauren at Hobo Mama stopped wondering and started knowing — loving and liking our children comes naturally. (@Hobo_Mama)
• Learning from Children — Lily, aka Witch Mom, finds out just how enchanting balloons can be. (@LilyShahar)
• Lifelong Learning — Lindsay at Living in Harmony has learned that what works for one kid might not work for another. (@AttachedMama)
• Walking alongside my daughter — Lindsey at Mama Cum Laude is learning to give the clock less power over her family’s life.
• Things my baby taught me about me — Luschka at Diary of a First Child is proud of how she has grown as a mother. (@lvano)
• From my children, I have learned — Mama Mo at Attached at the Nip has a litany of beautiful lessons, from selflessness to sleeplessness.
• The Little Things in Life — In a simple and lovely prose poem, Mandy at Living Peacefully with Children shows how adults worry about the wrong things and forget the little, important ones: watching ladybugs, jumping in leaves, cherishing each moment as it comes.
• The Virtues of Motherhood — Melissa at The New Mommy Files has had opportunities to learn from children as both a teacher and a mother. (@NewMommyFiles)
• My Kids Have Taught Me That It’s Time To Stop Blogging — Melodie at Breastfeeding Moms Unite! has learned that childhoods fly by too fast to blog. We’ll miss your wonderful online presence, Melodie, and we wish you much peace and happiness. (@bfmom)
• Having Kids Has Taught me a Thing or Two — Michelle at The Parent Vortex learns all day long — from fun facts about hedgehogs to tying a complicated wrap with a screaming child and an audience. (@TheParentVortex)
• We Could All Learn from the Children — Momma Jorje takes time to get on the floor and play so that she can see the world through her child’s eyes.
• Teaching Forgiveness — Mrs Green at Little Green Blog has a daughter who’s taught her unconditional love — even when she feels like she does’t deserve it. (@littlegreenblog)
• Parenting as a joint venture — Olivia at Write About Birth appreciates watching the astonishing way her children learn. (@writeaboutbirth)
• Beginner’s Mind — Rachael at The Variegated Life learns from a child who builds bridges to nowhere, calls letter magnets his numbers, and insists dinnertime is truck time. (@RachaelNevins)
• A baby’s present — RS at A Haircut and a Shave presents a short poem on the differences between a baby’s mindfulness and ours.
• Self-Confidence Was Born With My Daughter — Sara at Halfway Crunchy learned to trust her instincts by responding to her child’s needs — and saw her self-confidence bloom.
• The Importance of Being Less Earnest — Seonaid at The Practical Dilettante has one list of earnest and one list of silly things she has learned as a parent. (@seonaid_lee)
• Lessons my children have taught me — Sheryl at Little Snowflakes learned that attachment parenting was the best way to meet the needs of her child and herself. (@Sheryljesin)
• Till the water is clear — Stacy at Mama-Om learns that being present is the best present. (@mama_om)
• I Hold It — Stefanie at Very, Very Fine has learned that the ability to communicate is much more important than the number of words a child knows.
• What My Children Taught Me About Letting Go — Summer at Finding Summer is learning from her kids to laugh in the face of heartache. (@summerminor)
• Finding My Tools — The Artsymama has applied some of what she’s learned as a mama in the classroom, with great results!

During our week home sick together, my son did a lot of whining and a lot of snuggling. But he also came up with plenty of interesting things to say, including this question he asked of me while I was peeing:

“When are you going to get a penis?”

My response about that he would, sadly, not be growing a uterus any sooner than I would be growing a penis did not, I’m afraid, appear to satisfy.

This pumpkin is cheerier than I am these days.

Now I understand how my mom must have felt with chatterbox me as a preschooler. My son will not stop talking. Or singing. Or shrieking. Or making vroom noises. Or just plain saying, “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Are you listening to me? Mommy! Mommy! Listen to me, Mommy!” Yes, sometimes I fail to respond immediately, but it tends to sound like this even if I respond every single time.

I feel guilty for wanting more childcare, but this kid is driving me up a wall.

Here’s a dispatch from the aftercare program at my son’s Waldorf school as told by my 3.5-year-old son from his carseat.

Today Emma was being a teenager.
She was having a baby with no daddy. (hee hee)
She was just having a baby by herself. She didn’t have a husband.

Isn’t that kind of drama why I left high school teaching?

It was as though he knew NPR was about to run a story on texting while driving right after I dropped him off at preschool, or that the next day President Obama would ban federal employees from the practice. But honestly, I was just trying to have some fun. And I don’t think I was being all that dangerous, but who ever does? I guess my son.

No, I wasn’t texting. I was, however tapping my hands on the steering wheel to the “ram sam sam” beats of “Ram Sam Sam” and mock tickling the spot where the horn is while the Music Together crooners “guli-guli”ed.

Not that I was looking for any response from the kid, but he had one, probably straight out of my verbal playbook when I don’t feel like handing him his snack trap:

“Focus on your driving, mom.”

At first it was kind of cute, my son inserting “actually” into his sentences. And then he started doing it all the time. It has been one of the first verbal habits I’ve started to find pretty annoying, actually.

Damn, there it is.

At first I thought it was annoying because he was using it inconsistently — accurately at times, and, at others, just as a placeholder. And then, as I’m sure anyone else might have already figured out, I realized he’s just parroting his mama who does it apparently all the time.

And so to my parents, my siblings, even my mother-in-law, I discovered this past weekend. What is it with all of us, trying to differentiate some of what we’re saying from all the worthless fluff we’re usually blabbing about?

After I washed my son’s boo-boo and rubbed some tea tree oil on the wound, I offered a zebra bandaid, which was not acceptable to His Highness. He wanted a red one and insisted on getting it out himself. I tried to help him open it, but he brushed me away with a most serious request: “Let me focus.”

There’s that audio mirror again!

“Yahoo group!”

I could not believe my ears. But then he said it again; my tiny little three-year-old shouted exuberantly and unmistakably, “Yahoo group!” The follow-up question: “Is that for your meeting?”

My son asks before he goes to bed if I have to go to a meeting. I either say yes or that I’m “working in the basement.” He knows my life outside the home (or outside of its focus on him) as having a lot to do with the computer. He’s seen me do a lot of printing flyers for the moms group I lead, printing info for my tutoring clients, printing pieces to read for my writing group. I’m not sure if he has put it together that my talk about my work and just my life in general is also connected to this light-box I’m sitting at right now.

But I have probably spent a huge amount of time while he’s been in my vicinity posting or reading on Yahoo groups. I am on a ton of Yahoo groups. Some are just social — easier to follow the thread of where playgroup is if you can go to archives or just get the digest. A lot are health-related or about food coops or farm shares. Some are local and/or organizational. The newest ones are about freelancing and writing/editing. And one is about the band my husband is playing in with my playgroup friend and two playgroup husbands. I have a love/hate relationship with these groups. I go to “web only” and then feel left out when I forget to go read the postings. Sometimes I start to feel like the people on the lists need to get a life and stop all their inter-chatter. But then I find out about another group I just have to join. And when one blogging group went to Big Tent, I both rejoiced at the disappearance of irrelevant emails and also mourned the need to actually remember to go to a website in order to get any news. This is how I found myself with the lovely number of 11111 unread messages in my In Box the other day.

So it could have been from any number of conversations or references I mad that my son picked up this phrase. He seems to like it. I guess it’s fun to say. “Yahoo group Yahoo group Yahoo group!”

I wonder how long it will be before my husband and son and I have one to discuss meals and practice schedules. Not! (Now there’s a phrase!)

After sharing some sushi with his friend today at Whole Foods, my son said, “If you could save one for my daddy, well, that would be great.”

Other favorites me-isms include, “Well, I’m just looking for something” while standing in front of the fridge and “Where is the…” (about anything) followed without skipping a beat by “Oh, there it is” (right in front of him).

So cute I might just cringe off a tooth.

Today was the first day I’d had any childcare in two weeks. There was snow, then a fever, then my boy’s dad got sick and needed tending. Today’s four hours of babysitting went fast, but when they were over, I had a supremely lovely time with my son. It was a chilly rainy day, and I decided I was just not going to leave the house. E had had a mini outdoor excursion with the sitter and the other little girl who came over, so we just hung out. After spending a week nursing him like he was a newborn and hearing “can you hold me?” and “can I nurse” in that weak voice punctuated by a cough, it was great to have my buddy back.

I have a journal I’m developing to help me record developments and special events month to month, but I don’t often sit down and just write to my kid. A friend gave me The Mommy Journal, and I almost picked it up tonight, then thought about writing his “birthday letter” a month early (I did one at one year and think I never did year two – yikes!) but somehow I feel right now like I can get so much more down through a keypad.

So here’s part of the letter I’d like to write to my son today.

Dear E,

I write a lot about you, my dear boy, some for blogs, some for essays that will probably never make it into print, some for poems and essays that have. If something happened to me, you’d have a lot of insight into my mind. But every once in a while I realize that it would be wise to tell you to your face and to write directly to you simply how I feel about you in a way that is not skewed to the side of frustration or mommy-self-exploration. So this is the long version of my looking into your eyes and saying, “You are so much fun.”

In fact, you are a rock star. Your dad and I cannot believe the things that come out of your mouth, except that I keep hearing myself or him or some cosmic combo of what we’d say if we turned into one person. This morning, your dad left late for work because he was still a little sick, and he was still here when W got here to watch you and S for the morning. You were telling W about the valentine that D made for you the other night, describing in detail the cute flowers that pop up. I thought your story needed illunstration so W could appreciate how spot-on you were, so I fetched the card off the mantel.

You then went on to point out to W that behind where the card had been was a photo of Barack Obama. It’s actually a photo your grandma took on Inauguration Day, of you looking at Obama on the television screen, and it’s pretty cool. (In case you haven’t heard the story enough, your dad biked down to the Mall that day, and I left early, before either of you was awake, to go with a friend to see the ceremony from seats right in front of the Capitol. It was amazing, but it was a long day, and I had a hard time fully appreciating the privilege I had. In fact, you’ve heard so much about my tale that you‘ve been telling me, “Then the Metro was broken and you had to get out and get a taxi cab. And you were frustrated!”)

Anyway, W asked you, “Who is Barack Obama?” You answered in the clearest voice imaginable for a child who is not even three years old, “He’s our President!” Your dad and I were wowed that you responded that way totally unprompted. (And, lest you wonder about my politics if I should turn colors in old age, underneath our pride and astonishment in you was a deep relief that this reality has come to pass and that you will know this man as your first memory of a president.)

But we really shouldn’t be amazed by your sharp replies. They come out of your mouth all the time, with joy, with exuberance, with delight at the ability to express yourself. You were telling me today about someone “offering” you something — maybe it was when T peeled you an orange the other day at your dad’s band practice. Sometimes I wonder if the Waldorf education police are going to come after me for talking to you too much or making you get too big a vocabulary for your little stature.

But it’s not all fancy words. You know how to work it with slang, too. Yesterday I wrote on my other blog about how you said to me “C’mon” to get me to rethink my complaint. But when I wrote that, I’d forgotten that you used that phrase earlier in the day looking for a colorform/sticker of Murdoch, one of the Thomas trains (whose names you suddenly know after I relented to just one of your many desires in Staples last month and bought you that goofy workbook). You said, “Where are, Murdoch? Come on, Murdoch. Oh, there you are. I found you.” There are big and small stickers of the various trains, and you call the big one the “mama Percy” and the little on the “baby Percy.” Often when we talk about real babies, you ask or tell me whether or not the baby is crawling yet. “He doesn’t walk. I think he just crawls. Yeah. He does.”

Your hand gestures are opinionated and intentional. You point, you show us a serious two (one index finger on each hand), you put your hands up for not knowing. We recently watched old video of you babbling with crazy, meaningful gestures at around a year old; now those gestures elaborate clear-as-day words. You seem to have just about perfected your “R.” I caught you on video at the zoo a few weeks ago (our first diaper-free outing!) talking about a “funny biRd.” You slow over the R’s as though you’re making sure you’ve gotten it out and have been heard. The L’s are not so defined but are still highly intelligible.

We had a nice afternoon today after W and S left. You played well while I ate lunch, and then we worked on a puzzle before having a quiet nursing time and then moving on to make rolls for school (after I got a chicken in the oven). Even when I had you on the other side of the kitchen gate so I could deal with raw meat unfettered, you happily chatted with me. What a treat!

Two weeks ago you were so ill, you would hardly let me leave your side. We were nursing on the couch most of the day. If you weren’t asleep, I had to have you on my back in the Ergo. You had a fever for a full week, went back to diapers (new pull-ups, which you took to calling “undies”) and were so pale and quickly thin, we hardly recognized you. One night you showed enthusiasm for eating whatever random food we had but then, in the hour I was out tutoring, threw it all up, your shrunken tummy too overstuffed. Then you ate nothing for two days and when you finally told us to see how your rice tortilla was a plane a few nights later, we knew you were back.

I was kind of stressed out and busy before you got sick, so I was not fully present to your coolness for a while there. Having had to pause to deal with illness, now I’m having so much fun watching you learn about the world and get excited to show me things you’ve come up with. Normally I try to acknowledge what you’ve done without judging or heaping empty praise, in line with what I’ve read of Alfie Kohn and Unconditional Parenting. But when I videotaped you today, I was trying to capture some of your verbose essence and so kept prompting you to make you talk. I asked you questions and said, “Good!” when you shared a response. (Your father assures me this does not sound like the normal me.)

Even though I hate listening to myself, I’m glad to have captured a long convo for your part. I asked what else you ate with rolls at the Waldorf school (thinking butter), and you said, “Enzymes” (as in digestive enzymes, which we’ve been taking for the last few months). “But you forgot to bring my enzyme yes-ter-day,” you added, using the word that has come to mean “at any time in the past.” I asked you what the weather was like today and you said, “Well, it stopped raining!” To my inquiry about it being cold or warm, you replied “It was freezing!?!” and then proceeded to describe your time outside this morning running down the hill in our back yard.

I know from watching that older babble video the other day that I really will forget what life was like at this point in time. The more I write, the more I can hold onto. And I hope for you that all this time I’ve spent writing — while mostly for me to keep me sane — will possibly tell you something about yourself that you’re glad to know.

I sure do love you. Thanks for teaching me so much.
Love,
Your mama, Jess