The Family Room

Going to BlogHer?

Well, it's official. I am going to BlogHer 2007! I'm so excited: to meet fellow bloggers, to learn more about building communities and to have a bit of solo girl time. A few weeks later, J. is going to meet his brother in Milwaukee for a weekend of baseball and brotherly bonding, so it all works out. Of course I'll be posting from the conference, so stay tuned!

If you're going and want to meet up, drop me a line!

Serendipity and a Fine Pizza Pie

Kristen's comment to my last post reminded me that, for a while now, I've wanted to write about expectations: you know, those critters that look cute and harmless, but can really turn nasty if you let them. Last weekend we took our expectations to the zoo, where we left them, damp and crumpled, under a pile of elephant poo. By which I mean that Isaac did NOT have a good time, whether because of the heat, a bout of four-year-old cussedness, or the buzz and unfamiliarity of the place. Who knows? And it doesn't really matter, because the "big fun" places (anyplace that costs more than $20 to get in and/or ends in "land") rarely work for us: too noisy, too loud, too much. But we still find many, many ways to have fun. But it's mostly when we don't plan; when we let serendipity take its course, and then, as it happens, fun finds us.

This afternoon I took Isaac to lunch at our very favorite pizza restaurant. I called ahead and ordered a pie to go, and when we got there the place was jammed with 20-somethings, plus a crew of hipster parents enjoying a pie with their similarly hip-looking kids. We stood in the cramped doorway listening to fairly loud hip-hop while we waited for our pie to finish baking. And you know what? I began to sway a bit, and Isaac swayed along with me, and soon we were sort-of-dancing along to the music. And then Isaac caught a glimpse of us in the mirror on the opposite wall, and turned and gave me a look of such delight and love that I vowed on the spot to exorcise those $#!@#% expectations forever. I am not so delusional to think that's actually possible, but I try, my friends, I do try.

Finally the pie was ready, and we took it, and a nice big cup of milk, outside. We sat on the wooden bench and munched while we people-watched: a parade of dogs and their people, kids and their parents, and a glorious rainbow of haircuts, colors and tattoos on young and old alike. It was our city, and it was heaven.

Later, I dropped Isaac off with J. for a few hours and went in search of my long-lost mojo. I treated myself to a frozen yogurt, a pedicure, a summery lip gloss and a pair of jeans, and, by the end of the afternoon, I am happy to say, I felt sort of like a girl again.

Highs and Lows

So we went to the zoo again yesterday, lunch packed, all sorts of best intentions, and you know what? He hated it. HATED IT. Didn't want to see the animals, didn't want to do much of anything, in fact, but sink to the ground and wail, "Naaaaah!!!" Was it the heat? (It was pretty hot, after all.) Was it the subtle (or not so?) pressure of a "fun day out?" Was it just a bad moon phase? Dunno. So we left after much heroic effort to have fun, drove down the hill and went for ice-cream and a walk closer to home. And you know what? Fantastic mood for the rest of the day: giddy, silly, loving, talkative, the whole bit. If only we could parse out these $#@!#$ moods and see what they mean.

Three hallmarks of this current phase, at age 4 years, 0 months: obstinacy, limit testing and joke cracking (of a sort). Is it possible we're in early puberty?

What Are You Saying?

By Jordan Sadler, SLP

 We sat at the dining room table this morning, my family and me, enjoying breakfast together.  My almost 3-year old held up his oddly-shaped, partially-eaten bagel and chirped, "Yook, Mommy, dis yooks just yike a [cao]!"  "A cow?" I asked, trying to see a bovine in his breakfast.  "No!" he said, immediately irritated, "A [cao]!"  "Oh, a car!" I said, relieved that I had gotten it.  At this point, the child burst into loud sobs.  I am talking about from-the-gut, frustrated, no-one-understands-me sobs.  He simply could not recover.  There was to be no more guessing, no more trying to say it another way.  Leaving my untouched coffee behind (the true maternal sacrifice), I got up from my chair, made my way around the table, and knelt by my child.  All I could do was hug him and say the familiar words, "I know you're trying, sweetie...we want to know what you were saying...sometimes it's so hard," and then, "It's going to be okay, honey, it's going to be okay," and then: nothing.  In the end, I took him from his chair and held him on my lap.  He asked for a story, and listened to it as the sobs gradually subsided.  We never made it back to the table; I never knew what funny thing his bagel looked like this morning.  And I was sad about that.  Very sad.

For more than 10 years now, parents have been asking me the important question, "What can I do when my child is trying to tell me something that I don't understand?"  Each time, I've shared all the tricks I knew: "Listen carefully and try to figure it out.  If you can't, though, don't fake it - they'll know your response is not genuine", "Ask him to try showing you", "Ask him if he can say it another way, with different words", and "Be sure he always knows that you want to understand, that what he's saying is important, that you're trying."  Of course, I'd been in that position with their children as well, in our speech therapy sessions, and I knew it was really challenging.  We don't want to damage a child's self-esteem, and we're doing our best to keep frustration at a minimum whenever possible, but sometimes it is very upsetting for a child who is already working so hard to communicate with us.

Now that I have a young child of my own who came into the world with some oral motor and articulation difficulties, I know that it feels qualitatively different to a parent than it does to a therapist: sometimes, when a child is working on speech production these suggestions don't cut it - they aren't enough - and at times this struggle leaves both parent and child feeling very, very sad. 

So now I will add to my list of suggestions, "Sometimes, you just have to sit with him, hold him tight, and not say anything at all."