Safety, part II

(Continuing on the idea that Hibiscus needs safety, not bonding, right now.)

If Hibiscus needs to know her world is safe and can fully contain her before she can move on emotionally, then she has an absolute need to test all the limits she can find.  And that is where she has been seeming to put most of her energy in our relationship lately.  This is extraordinarily exhausting from my perspective, and it feels combative to a calm and balanced adult, but it might feel like bonding to her.

For instance, while he was here, Daddy felt like Hibiscus was constantly challenging him and trying to push him away, and maneuver to end up with me and avoid him.  We mutually decided that we wouldn't allow her the luxury of bonding with one of us at a time, and I purposefully "abandoned" her with him, and they went out and bought pretty shoes together, and I refused to read bedtime books so she had to listen to him, and he held her down while she screamed and tantrumed and threw up on him, and then read her books when she calmed down.  She still felt prickly to him, but now that she is gone, she speaks of him so tenderly and misses him so much, I think we both misinterpreted her actions.  I think she was working really hard to push him away, not because she didn't like him or because she wanted to be with me, but because she needed to prove that she COULD NOT push him away.  The weapons she had at her disposal were being prickly and mean, and using me as a tool to make him jealous or drive him away.  And vomit.  Vomit plays an important role in Hibiscus's arsenal.

I am still here, so the rest of the new-family-boundary testing is by definition centered on me.  And it seems to me -- and this is where I could be wrong and adding another layer of injury to her life -- that the answer she is looking for is Absolute Rigidity.  

Consistency to the point of rigidity is difficult for adults, because we are able to balance different concepts simultaneously in our brains.  Little children CAN NOT actually do that.  So we can think, "I usually make him clean up his toys, but I know that I'm late with dinner tonight so he's more tired than usual, so I'll clean them up for him tonight."  Some children can deal with 90% consistency.  Some of them (like mine) think "mom says I have to clean up my toys, but she cleaned them up, so I don't actually have to."  And then, if they are spirited and stubborn (like mine), they will spend the next YEAR working to figure out exactly how to make mom clean up their toys again, and they are perfectly willing to throw a fit and get punished every night in order to solve the mystery.

The first couple weeks with the family together felt like total chaos to me, and I think the children were all in too much internal chaos to be organized from the outside.  But we've been gradually adding in more and more routine -- or rules, or whatever you want to call them.  And this seems to be a relief to Hibiscus.  I just have to be absolutely unreasonable about adhering to my own rules!

We already have charts that explain, in pictures and writing, the steps to Bedtime Routine and Dinner Routine and so forth.  I added a book about our family, which on each page says "in the --- Family, we..." and continues with some rule or policy or pattern like "when we make a mess, we say "that's okay, I can clean it up" " or "we help each other out" or "we use polite words like ---".

In the book I promised the children that there is no hitting and no hurting in this family, which is kind of unbelievable in the world Hibiscus and Buttercup know.  Well, if something's unbelievable, you need to test it, right? 

Experiment A: Mama - what does it take to make Mama hit me?  How mad does she have to be?  What is the behavior that she likes the least, and how many times to I have to do it?  I am sure she will hit me eventually, so I want to just get there and see how it happens.

Experiment B: self - what does it mean that hitting isn't allowed?  I can surely hit my sister, whom I've hit many times before.  Can I hit when mama isn't in the room? can I hit if I lie about it and say I didn't? can I hit if it doesn't really hurt? can I hit a grownup who could hit me back? how about kicking, or shoving, or biting?

Experiment C: siblings - are they treated the same way I am?

Our rule is: You hit, you sit.  (Or, you hurt, you sit.)  Sitting is not fun, but it's worth figuring out that it happens every time.  And it is a great relief to know that Brother goes in for his turn in punishments too, and is equally not happy about it.  And the look on Hibiscus's face when Buttercup got her first Hit-Sit was amazing: she was obviously thinking "wow! if even she isn't allowed to hit, then there really IS no hitting allowed around here!"

(I do insist that the children allow Buttercup some differences because of her age, but the hitting rule is so important I decided that no one gets out of it.  I think Buttercup is getting old enough to understand, but even if she doesn't, 20 seconds on the couch isn't going to hurt her, and it really helped the older kids.)

Most other consequences have a warning system.  When I need one of the kids to do something and they refuse, I repeat what to do and what will happen and start counting down from 5.  If I get to 1 and they haven't done it, I help them or they sit.  If they fight me, I put them in a safe-hold.  If they refuse to stay where they're supposed to sit, I sit on them to keep them there.  (If they were smaller, I could probably hold them there, but sitting is the reliable way I've found to keep them still.)  If they are consistently being rude or out of control, then they need a nap.  I try to emphasize that the sits and naps are time to calm down and get in control; I'm not sure Hibiscus understands that positive spin on things, but she gets the count-down.

I count down from 5, and there are never ever any "one and a half.... one and three quarters...." kinds of things to confuse the issue.  I've been told elsewhere that 5 is too many, but I chose that because of the language barrier, to give her an extra couple seconds if she needed it to decode some of the conversation.  After I get to 1, the consequence always happens, even if she starts doing what I asked two milliseconds later.  And I have to be careful to never start the countdown if I'm not ready to spend the next 20 minutes enforcing what I've stated and sitting on a child, if necessary.  This puts me, as the solo adult with three children, at an extreme disadvantage sometimes, but luckily they don't know that!

Almost as soon as I introduced the counting system, Hibiscus started to control her behavior when I started to count.  Then we had a couple of weeks of her yelling "you no for counting!!" whenever I started to count.  I got very bored of saying "if you do it the first time I ask, I won't have to count."  (I don't keep exact track, but I try to ask them with no threats at least twice, but not more than three times, before I start counting.)  But I guess it has sunk in, because I haven't gotten yelled at for counting in a few days.

Then there are a million things which are just natural consequences (with a little parental enforcement, cough-cough).  If you play with your food, you're done eating.  If you spill, you clean it up before you do the next thing.  If you haven't done your before dinner routine, including clearing and setting the table, you don't start to eat.  If you aren't finished with your bedtime routine, you don't get to read books until you are.  And so forth.  I bet a lot of families have routines like this, and as the Waldorf philosophy says "routine replaces discipline."  But I bet most families -- and Waldorf schools -- don't have the bulwarks of their routine attacked by such determined battering rams.  Emerson is pretty good at that himself, but luckily we started these consequences months ago and he had a chance to get at least some of it out of his system.  But I noticed that we had to have one really bad experience with each rule (e.g. he refused to set the table and entirely missed dinner and had to go to bed), and then he decided it wasn't worthwhile to challenge it again -- and he moved on to a new rule, and how I wished he would generalize a bit!  But Hibiscus has a lot larger need for, and greater lack of, security and consistency, and her, um, curiosity about rules goes much deeper.  Each one needs to be challenged multiple times and with different levels of violence.  Some of these are also very appropriate two-year-old rules (for instance, I don't make Buttercup clean up a mess by herself, but I do take away her food if she throws it), in which case, they need to be challenged on behalf of Sister, too.

I remember one particular moment, probably about a week after Daddy left, which was 3 or 4 weeks into our living together.  We were eating dinner, and Hibiscus spilled some water on the floor.  I said "that's okay, you can clean it up" (recognize that from the book? the children say it regularly).  Hibiscus glared at me, and when she thought I wasn't looking, carefully poured out the rest of her glass into the spill.  I said very calmly "you can continue eating after you clean it up," and put her bowl up on the counter, and continued interacting normally with the other two children.  Hibiscus sat there for many minutes, glaring at me.  I could see her considering her options (literally, as she stared at the various props): just plain throwing a fit.  Trying to grab the food bowl and eat it anyways.  Pour out Buttercup's water too.  Attack me.  After a very long time, she got up and got a towel and cleaned up the water, and without any other comment I said "thank you for cleaning it up" and gave her back the bowl.  I think that was the moment when she began to trust that things really would be consistent in this household, and if she kept her end of the bargain then I would too.

The ending is just as important as the rhythm of the consequence.  As soon as it's over, then it's over.  As soon as the routine is complete or the mess is cleaned up or the sit is over, I got right back into acting completely calm and normal.  Sometimes, this is really hard.  Sometimes I have been fighting with a child, physically and emotionally, in one way or another, for hours.  Sometimes, it's hard to keep my voice neutral, and hard to give loving touches to a child who succeeded in drawing my blood a few minutes before.  But I try really hard.  And sometimes, honestly, it's not hard at all.  I've gotten into the pattern of rule-say-remind-enforce, and sometimes it's just another parenting job, like washing the dishes or peeling onions, that you just do it when you have to do it.  

But for Hibiscus, that's really important, and really shocking.  I don't think her English or the complexity of her understanding is really enough to manage concepts like "angry at the behavior, not the child" or "consequence vs. punishment" and so forth.  But she's learning that even when she's very very "bad," she can't make me hate her.  I keep going back to acting the way I acted before.

But getting into countdowns and enforced sits all day long isn't any fun either (at least for me) so I recently introduced another layer of consequences.  I made a "Good Control" and "Out of Control" chart, and the children can earn rewards and disappointing consequences.  The reward stickers they earn mutually and go towards a family reward; the Black X's are individual.  Hopefully that helps reduce the competition and make it less obvious if someone had a helpful day and someone didn't.

Let me start by saying I don't really like reward charts, and I've avoided them as much as I can.  I don't think they're entirely bad, but I haven't wanted them to become a habit.  I want good behavior to be rewarding, not to have children constantly hoping for an extrinsic reward.  Eating dinner because you set the table is natural; eating cookies because you set the table is not.  But so much of the assumptions that we base our "good" and "not so good" ideals on are indeed cultural assumptions, of which Hibiscus does not have the advantage.  She does NOT know right from wrong, or polite from rude.  She does not know what it feels like to have self-control and how that is different from being out of control.  She has no idea about how doing one thing leads to another thing happening (thus her constant stream of injuries!).  Giving her a chart is giving her some more information to work with.

Our count-downs and natural consequences, and the very idea of a "black X," meant that we didn't get to any "Out of Control" consequences for quite some days.  We had our first experience with it last night, after talking about it all week.  I have said that Black X's are on top of the other consequences, which will stay the same.  They get one warning that they are about to get a Black X unless they (and I state exactly what I want).  Three Black X's mean a privilege is lost, and the potential lost privileges are listed on the chart.  (It also means I can use consequences that are a little more flexible for me than enforcing Sit's!)  Yesterday, which was a Sunday, Hibiscus got into a spate of rudeness and earned herself five X's over the course of the afternoon, which meant No Treat.  

Rather than waiting until we happened to encounter a treat and realize that she couldn't get it, I decided to serve ice cream that night, thus both getting the consequence out of the way and keeping it close to the behavior.  I was expecting a giant storm, and actually did a couple of bedtime chores ahead of time lest someone was so mad I couldn't get them done later.  I got out the ice cream and bowls, and then said quietly "oh, Hibiscus, I think there's a problem.  Go look at the chart."  We looked at the chart together and the X's and the "no treat."  And I served up the ice cream.  Into only three bowls.

There was a brief flurry when Hibiscus didn't want someone else served ice cream in her very own bowl, so I got out a different bowl and let Hibiscus hold her empty bowl.  Which she did.  She just sat on the other side of my chair, quietly, holding her bowl while everyone else ate ice cream.  Then we got ready for bed.

Of course she doesn't like to be punished, but I think there is some relief involved.  I said she would lose dessert, and she lost dessert.  I was still willing to sit next to her and touch her.  I defended her right to her bowl.  I didn't beat her.  Life may not be fun, but it was consistent.

Then there are all the small things that I'm rigid about, which might not even seem important at all.  Like that they can't switch places at the dinner table, and everyone has to stay in their own bed, and I always do bedtime blessings in the same order.  I probably should always brush their teeth in the same order, but they have other chores they finish at different times.  

The same bed decision kind of bothers me, because we have two beds, and I'm in one of them.  I looked forward to co-sleeping with my new children to bond with them, and I remember when I had an awful day with Emerson, looking into his angelic baby face as he slept and feeling the frustration melt away into love.  But within the first few days of being at home, who got to sleep with me turned into a competition with winners and losers and a lot of maneuvering in the middle.  I made the decision that we would stay sleeping the way we had been before: the two girls in one bed, Emerson and I in the bed we had already been in.  I worried that it would seem preferential to Emerson, but sometimes a parent just has to make a decision.  Besides, to be perfectly honest, I'm used to sleeping with Emerson and we both relax into the way our bodies curl together.  Hibiscus kept me up half the night with her wiggling and her hugs and her hair-touching.  Night-time bonding will have to wait until mama isn't quite so desperate for sleep!  So I lay in the girls' bed to sing them lullabies, and leave and come back and sleep with Emerson.

The chairs at the table isn't so emotional, but I think it's still important.  Jockeying for position at the table takes mental energy, and it quickly turns into "better" and "worse."  There are so many manners at the table to worry about and rules to challenge, it just removes a layer of contention.  

In many ways, that's safety.  And I think that's what she's looking for.

I could be wrong.  She could be needing love or acceptance or affection most of all.  All her difficult behavior could be because I am not filling her cup up with three hours of snuggles a day.  Maybe acting like a 2-year-old means I need to go back before age two and rock her and feed her out of a sippy cup and hold her on my left side and work on encouraging eye contact.  It could be something else -- that's the scary thing about parenting, isn't it?  We never know.  As the joke goes, children don't come with instruction manuals, and children like these don't even come with a history.  

It just feels to me, right now, like she's putting some much effort into testing limits and rules and relationships, because she cares so much about where exactly the limits and rules of the relationships are.  It seems to me, that maybe she has to find her own borders and the boundaries that hold her in tightly, before she can move on to other emotional needs. And that right now, she's testing me, so eventually she can feel safe loving me.

Being a Mother of Three

Being a Mother of Three

I feel like I've been doing a lot of talking about how frustrated I am and how difficult life is, so I want to clarify:

I am loving being a mother of three.  I love getting to know each one of them, and seeing their smiles and hearing the surprising things they each say.  I love feeling them all crowd around me and snuggle in close when we're reading books at night.  I love feeling their soft skin and kissing their faces, and looking at them and memorizing each feature.  I love watching each of them learn and figure things out, and I love seeing what each one is interested in and how they explore.  I love thinking about how each one will grow up, and what is special about each personality, what they will grow out of and what they will grow into.

And (perhaps) most of all, I love watching them together.  I love seeing their friendships and their connection.  I love hearing how Emerson and Hibiscus defend each other and stick together at school.  I love watching the bigger ones be tender towards Buttercup and help her out, and seeing the pride on their faces when they fix her problems.  I love watching them play, and seeing how they build upon each other's ideas.  I love watching them run and tumble around the lawn, and how they try new things when they watch each other.  I love watching how they are learning to have pride in each other, worry about each other, comfort each other.  I sometimes even enjoy watching them fight, because then they start to figure out how to work it out, or I see them have empathy for each other.  And also, I know the fighting and the worrying means that they are trusting each other and letting out their emotions together.

I even love going places with all of them.  I enjoy the challenge of keeping an eye on all of them, and hearing what they're thinking about and seeing what they explore.  I like the feeling of being together as a big family, and being busy serving food and balancing wants and thinking of things to do and figuring them out.  I like being busy with children and surrounded by children.

So, a lot of things are hard right now.  A lot of those have to do with our situation, and feeling so isolated and with so little productive to do.  Because I'm isolated I'm also feeling exhausted, both because I don't have help in the practical matters and because I don't have my usual activities that help me feel regenerated and peaceful.  Some more has to do with struggling with cultural differences, from grocery shopping and the heat, to "advice" that is frustrating to me and to people treating my children in a way that I don't like.  And yes, some of it is the children themselves.  But I know that there's a lot of difficult stuff going on for them, too, that won't go on forever, and that the transition was going to be difficult no matter what but that we will settle in together eventually.

Meanwhile, this is part of the story and part of our family.  I am feeling "stuck" in Uganda right now, but I am also feeling incredibly blessed that I am really getting to know my children's country.  I am making friendships and hearing stories and not just basing my opinions on a few things I saw or the only things I heard in a few days' or a few weeks' trip.  I think about what I thought I knew about Uganda when I'd been here a month, and I know my relationship with this country is so much more deep and true!  I also know that it doesn't compare to really living here for a year or two or three, and that probably I would come out of this frustrated funk if I were here for longer.  But at this point in my life, I can't practically stay in another country for years, and meanwhile I feel like it is a huge blessing for all my children to have this experience even though it is limited.

"All my children"..... I am so happy to be able to say that, instead of "my child" or "both my children."  I feel like finally we have arrived at where we are meant to be --- which is on a long journey of family-ness!

Sharing and Taking Turns

An article has been going around Facebook lately about adult-enforced sharing, which is what most of us teach to little kids.  "Leif has a toy you want?  Okay, I'll set the timer for two minutes, and then you can have the truck."  The article points out that this isn't the way the real world works; that we adults can't walk into a room where someone is working on a brand-new iPad and say "I like that, so it's going to be my turn in 5 minutes, so finish up!"  She says that in her parent-led preschool, they even keep toys reserved for children when they have to pause to go potty or something like that.  The child can keep the toy as long as he is interested, and no one else gets an enforced "turn."  Many of my friends have liked this turn-around of turn-taking, but I have a lot to add to the idea. 

Obviously, bringing together three independently playing children and expecting them to be together and play together 24 hours a day with a limited supply of toys, is an adventure in figuring out sharing rules.  Have two of those children being dramatic, bossy, leader types, and mama's got to work out some rules really quickly!   So we have rules, and they're firm rules, but they're pretty simple and hands-off.

I originally had some more ideas in mind, including more ownership of specific toys, both permanent and temporary (like an individual basket).  But it turns out the only things that really belong to someone are workbooks and coloring books, which get used up.  They each have their own dolly, and they can ask for their own one back, but they haven't been too picky if they see someone else with it, and sometimes dollies end up in the bottom of the box for days on end.  The more breakable or many-piece toys are on the "ask mama" shelf -- which is difficult enough to remember -- so I only let things like legos down when they're feeling pretty calm anyway.  They've gotten a few little things, like toys from school or in gift baskets, that are precious mostly to the owner, and naturally and projects that the child has made.  Other than that, they don't really care about having their "own" things.  However, it has really helped having plenty of everything.  So they don't each have their "own" blocks or farm animals or toy food, but there's enough of them to go around. 

Basically the above principle of "turns" -- or rather, NO turns -- is the only one that we've really used.  Which is, basically, if a child is playing with something, then he is playing with that something, until he decides something else... whether that's abandoning the toy, inviting someone else to join the game, giving it to someone else who asks -- or he keeps it the whole day long.  That's it.  If someone starts a game with a toy, they have ownership of that game, and the other children can become involved, or not.

There's a few reasons for this, and I can draw on different philosophies in my life for this.  (Or I can just point out that it makes kids fight less.  Why would you ever go to the potty if someone else could get your toy while you're gone?  Fighting less is a good reason for just about anything around here right now.  As is avoiding potty accidents, for that matter.)

From the Reggio-Emilia/Pistoia philosophy, I have respect for a child's work and their own ability to self-direct.  For a child, their play is their primary work.  Children are so eager to copy us, and it's wonderful and sweet when they copy sweeping the floor and soaping up their tummies, but it's valuable to give them time to be the leaders.  This is another big reason why I'm not a sit-on-the-floor-and-play-together kind of mom, and I'm a terrible designing-cute-crafts kind of mom.  To let them truly lead and direct their own work, I've got to stay out of it.  That doesn't mean doing nothing, but it means not doing the same work.  

For instance, for the last hour or so the kids have been doing an activity of folding and cutting out flowers and butterflies, and I've been writing on the ipad at the same table.  They got the idea out of a craft book, and I helped them with the original instructions and then drawing the pattern on the folded paper, so they could be successful.  The craft book had specific paper to use and a specific scene to fill in with the completed flowers, but I ignored that part and got the book out of the way!  The kids used white paper, so then they wanted to color their flowers.  Then we talked about putting the flowers in a garden, and we thought about butterflies, so I helped them make folded-paper butterflies.  When Hibiscus started to cry because her butterfly didn't look like a butterfly, I drew on a little face and feet and patterns on the wings, but I didn't actually tell them what to do or how to color it to make it "look like" a butterfly.  I was trying to give her exactly the amount of support she needed to feel successful enough to stay engaged, without taking over her imagination.  Each of the kids needs different amounts of support in order to take off on their own, and then to keep soaring.  I had thought of giving them green paper to paste their creations onto, like a meadow, but luckily it took me a little while to find the colored paper and Emerson is used to being self-directed, so he told me to get white paper, and he drew on soil, grass, flower stalks, and a nice yellow sun.  Hibiscus followed suit.  The Reggio-Emilia/Pistoians believe that children imitating other children is natural, and they will naturally imitate back and forth all around and collectively come up with more ideas.  Whereas imitating an adult will just teach them to imitate, since there isn't the natural back-and-forth, and children will end up disappointed with their work because they can't make it look just like the adult's project..  So I didn't make any flowers or butterflies, but I could talk with them about what they were doing , fix problems or admire as necessary, but I was obviously engaged in my own work which was no competition for theirs.

It's the same thing with imaginative play.  For instance, I have seen all of them playing a little bit with baby dolls, and I like to see this nurturing, role-playing game, but I believe I can encourage the play in a more fulfilling way from a little distance.  I could get out a dolly and sit on the floor and rock it, and almost certainly someone would come over and start rocking their dolly too.  I could say "let's feed our babies!" and my child would say "okay! what shall we feed them?"  I would immediately think of the toy food, and go over and get out a wooden banana and we could both feed our babies wooden bananas until someone got bored of wooden bananas, and looked up at me to see what we could do next for our babies.  Instead, I see a child get out their baby and rock it.  "What a good mama you are!" I say.  "You are being so gentle and loving with your baby."  (Which gives them an example of gentle and loving, which are concepts we're working on, but that comes from their own choices.)  The child is proud and wants to rock the baby even more, but perhaps starts looking a little distracted or bored.  "Is your baby waking up?" I ask.  "Maybe she's hungry."  The child is happy to mime the baby doing something new, but asks "I don't know, what should I feed her?"  I hand the question back, saying "what does she like to eat?"  The child runs off, and several minutes later comes back with a basket, different colored duplos and a wand for stirring.  "I'm makin' soup," I am told, and the next half hour turns into a joyful exploration of making soup.  I am participating in the game, but only from the edges.  The child can't copy what I'm doing, and I never would have thought of making soup out of duplos!

So obviously, if we truly believe in our child's ownership of their own play, then we don't tell them which toys they can use and when by enforcing turn-taking.  I actually see this inspiring more creativity and back-and-forth mutual imitation.  For instance, this morning Emerson pulled the curtains over the easy chair in a corner to make a "housie."  He didn't want to share his housie with anyone, and asked me to make sure no one went in his housie while he was in the bathroom and gathering more supplies.  Hibiscus watched sulkily for a few minutes and argued that she wanted to go in the housie, which was getting more fascinating by the minute, but I pretty much ignored her.  Buttercup wandered over, not really truly understanding, and Emerson squealed "she's getting into the electrical stuff! take her out, that's really dangerous!"  I was already on my way, and I picked her up and said "that's Emerson's housie, you can play over here."  I put her on a cushion, which she started bouncing on, in pleasantly distractible 2-year-old fashion.  By then, Hibiscus started pulling the opposite curtain over the other corner of the room to make her own housie, and she wanted Buttercup in her housie.  Pretty soon, it worked out that all the couch pillows laid across the room connecting the housies, in varying piles, and they were bouncing back and forth in complicated patterns to go and visit each other.  The game went on, with all of them happily and deeply engaged, for at least half an hour.

What would have happened if I'd told Emerson that three children could fit in his housie, or that he had to let Hibiscus have a turn after three minutes?  Well, first of all, he would have started feeling upset and defensive, and probably his budding creative ideas would have been squashed under that negativity.  But he certainly would have had no impetus to start gathering "electrical stuff" to put in a housie he was about to give up, and the game would have lost that addition (they regularly make little forts with the curtains and chairs, but this time it became much more complex).  And if Hibiscus had gotten the house, she would have felt proud of getting something her brother wanted, but she wouldn't have had much plan of what to do with it.  Probably the house game would have ended with her "turn."

Which leads me to my own big reason for no "turns," from no philosophy whatsoever, just an exploration of my own values.  When my husband and I talked about what we wanted to pass on to our children, and what sort of adults we wanted them to become, the ability to focus and mentally dive into a project or problem was one of our top values.  On one hand, I think being a successful adult takes a certain amount of dedication and concentration -- and my husband and I are both musicians, which takes an extremely high amount of willingness to concentrate on something with no immediate reward, but the same could be said for other disciplines as well.  But equally importantly, I take such joy in really diving into something and focusing on it, for hours at a time, or in a different way for months or years.  I want my children to have that gift.

This came back in my mind first working with the orphanage children.  Whatever natural capacity they had for becoming truly engaged in work or play had been overwhelmed by emotional crisis, having to do adult's work, sickness and hunger, and having too many children around to ever be able to do anything.  But even so, the children's powerful desire, both to learn and to engage themselves in play and creativity, was amazing to me.  It seemed so clear that children just need to be given the capacity to explore and learn, and their inborn need guides them in what they need to do to grow up.

For orphanage children or cherished ones, play is actually amazingly complex.  The child seen an object and thinks of something to do with it, and as he holds it and manipulates it he thinks of other ideas of things to do.  He does the same actions over and over again, until they gradually turn into a new exploration.  As he becomes more focused and then expands his range of play, he usually needs both small and gross motor coordination; he often talks about what he's doing, giving him practice not just verbally, but mentally of leading the conversation.  If other people are around, they might become intrigued by the actions that he is doing; a child might come over and start imitating and adding her own ideas, or an adult might ask him questions or define his action, both of which use social and linguistic skills.  All these things are true whether a baby is banging a rattle on the floor, or a toddler starts putting things in and out of a box and dumping it over, or a child who starts building a complex castle and inventing lives for everyone in it.  However, that older child is also getting a chance to take over the powerful mommy/daddy role, experiment with gender roles, working through emotional difficulties, re-living events to fix them in her memory, practicing adult skills, experimenting with math and science skills in the real world, and focusing on whatever is important to him at that moment.  Isn't it amazing?  But it takes a long time of gradually making the play more complex, thinking of additional questions or ideas or additions, before the child is really truly engaged in any of those deeper issues.  

We all know that whatever the other child has is the most wonderful toy in the house!  I remember hosting a playdate when Emerson was two or so, when I was in constant amazement over how everything that the boys fought over, they chose to focus on things we had multiples of anyways.  It wasn't the big amazing fire engine, it was one of the dozen matchbox cars, or one of five balls, three of which were identical.  But when someone else is playing with it, THAT one looks so interesting!  I notice the same thing with older children, except a little more complex.  If someone's "into" a game and the other child isn't doing much, that game looks way better than the nothing, and the obvious thing to do seems to be to take the toy, and thus all the fun of playing will be MINE!!!!  Except the second child hasn't put the mental energy into it, so they don't actually have very much to do.  There are exceptions, when both children have amazing ideas about a particular prop which they want to use in different ways.  But usually, what happens is that one child is gradually creating a whole scenario using certain props.  The other child gets jealous and wants a turn, but if the adult enforces the switch, the other child imitates a little bit of what he saw, or does something obvious like drive a car back and forth for a few minutes, but without the mental engagement rarely makes it into real play.  So the focus and benefits of the first child getting into genuine play and building skills are lost, in order to have an artificial fairness and the second child not feeling jealous for a few minutes.  

The Waldorf method teachs than young children learn by example -- not that they learn by different things including watching us, but that everything they are learning, they are learning by following what we do.  So how do I actually share and take turns?  I'll think of a thing that I genuinely want and so does someone else, like sharing the one household computer with my husband.  Do we set a timer and trade it back and forth every five minutes, or twenty minutes?  Certainly not!  That would drive me crazy!  First of all, there's some logical sharing going on: I use it when he's not around, and he does when I'm out.  Secondly, we usually talk about it, but basically let the other person use it until they're done or come to a break.  We ask questions like "how long are you going to be?" or describe a specific, finite task and ask if we can use it for that moment, or if something urgent we explain that too.  

If I think of children following our model, that seems reasonable.  And the main element in our adult sharing seems to be discussion -- with each other, not a ruling third party.  Children can do this.  In my observation, they are often incredibly willing to hand over their precious toys, if they are simply asked respectfully, or they see a reason to do so.  This happened during the art activity, when Buttercup had the pair of child scissors and was snipping randomly at a little piece of paper.  Hibiscus saw her activity as rather useless, and what's more it was paused, so she grabbed the scissors for her flower.  Buttercup screamed and snatched the scissors away.  I suggested that Hibiscus ask her politely, and as soon as she said "Buttercup, please will you me scissors, hmm?" Buttercup examined the scissors thoughtfully, and passed them over.  

Which brings me to another point about sharing.  Some parents regulate toys because they know that children won't have everything they want in life, and they want them to learn to compromise and share.  I feel confident that they are getting plenty of practice dividing up things that are practical to share, without interrupting the importance of their genuine work.  We do a lot of sharing of food, when it makes sense to buy one portion and divide it into three child-sized bits, whether it's for economical reasons or because they only need a child-sized treat.  We only had one proper pair of child scissors, and one kind of chintzy pair we got at market, so they had to pass those back and forth -- including trading back and forth once there were only two of them cutting.  But scissors are a practical thing to share, and it wasn't a central or an emotional part of the activity.  They share more abstract things, too; chores are accomplished mutually, special activities happen together, they pass the jam at breakfast and help each other spread.  That's all learning to share.

And they all share the same small space, and most importantly, they have to share ME.  I'm more important to them than any toy or game, and they have to negotiate how everyone can snuggle and touch me while we read books at bedtime, and I can't sit next to everyone at dinner, and who holds what hand when we're walking.  And they're constantly hearing "wait your turn" or "I'll be there in a minute, I'm helping your sister go potty" or "I can't leave the stove right now" or "it's not your turn to talk, I'm listening to your brother."  Being one of three children is just naturally a life of sharing!  

Which is one of the things that gives me great joy after raising an only child for so long.  But even that long-time only child has adjusted pretty smoothly, given how few months it has been (or weeks, depending on how you are counting!), and given that the siblings arrived with a full set of demands and grabby hands, and superior strength.  He can see that everyone needs their teeth brushed and their plate served, and that I only have two hands and arms for holding and snuggling.  That's logical, but why should anyone else go in the housie he just built?

So, since I only do have two hands and arms and they must compromise on getting the perfect snuggle, at least I can provide them with the chance to do their work and play without interruption or division.  I think it actually significantly decreases fighting and competition, although they have to suffer through a few moments of wishing for something they don't have.  All three children have moments of wanting something that looks fun, but they also have moments of having their precious toy defended and handed back to them, and I think that second one is more powerful.  The older ones understand the system, and rarely even protest when I remind them that someone else is using it right now.  The vast majority of the time, the jealous child gets out something similar and starts a parallel game, and the child with the precious toy ends up including them to make the game more fun -- or the other child gets out the same supplies and they play the same game, like with making the flowers and butterflies.  Sometimes they do discuss and negotiate taking turns or a switchover.  The rest of the time, the second child wasn't really that interested, and ends up going to play outside or something.

As I write this, Buttercup went and got out a paper fan Hibiscus had made earlier and was fanning herself with it, when Hibiscus noticed and wanted it back.  It was Hibiscus's creation, so I had Buttercup give it to her.  Buttercup screamed.  Hibiscus fanned herself and said "I'm cold, I'm hot, I'm cold, I'm hot" playfully, and I suggested to Buttercup that she say "sister, can I please use it?" which she promptly stopped crying in order to lisp out.  Hibiscus wasn't really that interested in fanning herself, and she liked being asked, so she gave it back, repeating her favorite words a few times to herself.  A few minutes later, Hibiscus wanted the scissors, so she asked politely as she grabbed them out of Buttercup's hand without waiting for a response.  Buttercup screamed again, which I interpreted for Hibiscus that she didn't want to give up the scissors.  We looked together for the other pair of scissors, and once Hibiscus had them, Buttercup recovered enough to say "sis-ah dis one.  Me dis one." So I defended individual property, and gave enough examples for the children to negotiate between themselves.  Now I hear Hibiscus using my words, "sister, can I please use it?" calmly to Buttercup, and Buttercup, when not being attacked, can manage "mpa, mpa, ta na na na, lindako, lindako."  ("give me, give me, ta na na na na, wait, wait,") which is going from demanding words, nonsense, into the words that I use.  I repeated the words to Hibiscus, who has a really hard time respecting her baby sister's space, but complied.

This is all happening at the end of quiet time.  They are back at the table with pencils and scissors, folding paper, except this time they have all kinds of new idea about what they want me to draw and they cut out, like giant flowers and girls and boys and buckets.  The somewhat directed activity this morning has turned into total creativity.  I'm still here, facilitating polite conversation and drawing the half-shapes on folded paper.  So I'm helping them be successful, but they are entirely directed by their own imaginations and concentration.  And as usual, their child imaginations are much more fruitful than what me or an activity book could have come up with!  I would never have thought of cutting out paper people, making a family, and then cutting out paper buckets for them to carry around!  And the two of them, working independently but nearby, came up with more than either of them would have thought of on their own.  Emerson thought of cutting out non-flowers, and Hibiscus thought of doing people, and Emerson started doing buckets, and now HIbiscus wants to do basins big enough to fit the people in for their baths, and Emerson did a hand-washing bowl.  I love watching them!

So, basically, I try to stay out of their play except when I can help support them, or when they become frustrated.  I praise what I like to see and help them find words for what they're trying to express.  I ask questions that can give them ideas for where to go next, but that remain open-ended so they stay in control of their own play.  I respect that their lives are full of rules and requirements, and that their play is entirely their own.  I don't tell them how to play, and I don't tell them how to use their toys or that they must include people who aren't naturally part of the game yet.  In return, I see them playing with increasing creativity and concentration, and naturally including each other as they make their play more complex and thoughtful.  That's a lot of what I DON'T do insofar as sharing and taking turns -- I don't do much of anything!  They play, and I remind them to let each other play in peace.

Oh, and I also come over and help open the scissors when Buttercup decides to experiment with cutting her own finger off.  That's another time a parent comes in handy!

EEMerson's picture, and then Hibiscus';s butterflies and flowers.

We Hate Stairs, continued

It was that black-hole time of night.  After I'm finished eating dinner and I try to clean up a little bit, and the kids insist they're still hungry but they're actually ducking under the table and throwing food when my back is turned.  And I needed to put the laundry that was soaking in the basin in the washing machine so I could put the children in the basin, and everyone wanted to "help" me and this is really only a one-person job.  I caught Buttercup throwing clothes pins in the washing machine along with the clothes, which would certainly ruin them, so that was it for her: up she went.  The big kids had to clean up a few things in the main room and I was wrapping Buttercup and running a bath.  Emerson whined that he didn't know what to clean and I suggested he mop up the water since it was suspiciously wet under the table.  Our whole apartment floor is tile, which gets dangerously slippery as soon as it's wet, and the kids are always running and falling down and landing on their bums and crying.  Emerson got really excited about mopping, and he was trying to stick the mop under the bath water that I was running and I was trying to convince him not to, and then I was trying to convince him that I wanted him to mop UP the water, not mop MORE water all over.  Meanwhile Buttercup had a toy cell phone by my head that she was talking on and banging around and whining, and Hibiscus was interpreting "clean up" as meaning she should put her back on a couch pillow on the ground and push herself around with her feet, which (obviously) involved a lot of screaming and strange noises, so I had one ear out to hear if there was a genuine problem.  Emerson came back for more mop water, and I followed him out of the bathroom telling him that he wasn't supposed to be mopping at all, someone could fall.  Well, he already had, and it turned out he had just mopped our illogical three giant stairs between the bathroom and the rest of the apartment.  And my feet went right out from under me and I crashed down the stairs.

The older kids were both in the bedroom, near the stairs, and I saw their faces turn to surprised horror as they realized I really was falling, that Mama isn't magical and can't stop all the disasters.  I must have hit all the steps on the way down, because there were several crashing feelings and it took a little while.  Buttercup started screaming bloody murder and I didn't know if she was hurt, and I must have cried out too.  As soon as Hibiscus saw us crashing, she collapsed on the bed and started screaming as though all the pain were inside her body, too; she flapped her hands and bounced and writhed and waved her head.  Emerson's face fell in fear and guilt as he suddenly connected the dots about the mopping and slipping.  I think he felt too bad to cry, which at least was less noise.  Oh, and Hibiscus was also screaming "I telled him no for mopping da stairs, I telled him no for mopping!" (which she didn't, she was busy being upsidedown on her pillow, but I understand the sentiment).

I think I said something to them, or several somethings.  And then all the pain hit me.  I very rarely cry out loud, as I just feel better holding my breath in, but I ended up on my hands and knees, crying.  Which of course made the kids even more distraught, but sometimes -- what can you do?

I have a giant bruise and scrape on one arm, from the heel of my hand all the way to my elbow.  It was bright purple and swollen almost an inch up by the time I looked at it, a few seconds after the fall.  I have another bruised patch on the very lowest part of my back, taking up about half that area, not as swollen but already purple and scraped.  Both my wrists are painful and tweaked, like I tried to break my fall with them.  The hurt arm is, naturally, the right one (and I'm right-handed), and since the entire muscle is so bruised, using the muscle at all pulls at the pain.   I thank God so much that I don't think Buttercup was hurt at all, at least not hurt in a way that leaves marks, although she must have gotten a good bump.  

I finally managed to get the kids to stop screaming, and stood there, just shaking in pain.  This is the point when you think "who can I call to get the kids ready for bed because I can NOT manage it?"

And this is the point where there is no one to help and you just have to do it.

First of all, I got out ice and a bag and a washcloth, and ibuprofen -- even just using my hands for those little actions hurt like crazy.  And Emerson, now crying in guilt, was trying to be "helpful" by doing things like re-filling the ice cube tray with water before I was done with it, and spilling water all over because he was shaking, and Hibiscus was "helping" by telling me there was one more ice cube left in the corner there -- get that one, mama, look look there right there get that one let me bang it for you ----.  Since she wasn't hurt, I am so thankful that Buttercup was already wrapped up, because I couldn't have managed any more "help" at that point!  

Then I tried to convince the kids that I didn't need to go to the hospital, and that they needed to get ready for bed.  They are old enough to complete many of the physical bedtime chores, and they are old enough to understand that there was a reason that I couldn't do it for them, and they are old enough to feel guilty and want to help out.  They are not old enough to put all those thoughts into action.  There was a lot of wandering around in the wrong rooms and crying about taking a bath first and fighting about who was going to have their teeth brushed first even though I wasn't actually brushing anyone's teeth.  

And then the power went out.

They were both in the bathroom and I was in the main room, and they both started to cry and I told them to stay where they were but they didn't. And just as I got everything out and got the candle lit, the power went on again and Hibiscus blew out the candle although I told her not to.  Because a minute or so later, the power went out again and I had to start with lighting the candles all over again.  And Hibiscus went to helpfully put

her dirty clothes in the hamper, like I told her to, but she brought the candle along with her and placed it on the floor while she tossed clothes over it.  Briefly.  I am once again glad our apartment is so dang small and they cannot easily be out of sight!

We got everybody ready.  Except for Buttercup, who was quiet in the wrap, except for occasionally saying "mama big owie" in a worried voice.  She gets her bath in the morning, and I thought she could live the night without getting her teeth brushed, so I just kept her up there out of the way until diapers and pajamas and read books.

And of course they managed to argue even more than usual about the reading books.  Hibiscus picked out three and insisted those were the books for tonight, but Emerson hadn't picked his yet and when he contributed it Hibiscus kept trying to put all of hers in my lap first.  Usually I have been sitting propped in bed, with Buttercup on my chest and one child on either side.  But since I had to keep ice on my arm, I couldn't put anyone on my lap or my arms around anyone either.  Hibiscus started off generously holding Buttercup on her lap, but Buttercup actually wanted to snuggle up next to me instead of being flung around on her sister's lap, which meant that Hibiscus would have to be an entire six inches away from my body, which was totally unacceptable and required a great deal more crying.  The prelude to the crying was pushing and yelling, which got sleepy, quiet, wrapped-up Buttercup all awake and lively again.  And I couldn't do anything to stop them, not even move over six inches, since I was balanced precariously on the pillows so nothing was pushing on the giant bruise on my back.  Oh, but the power was on again.

The end of the story.... they're all asleep.  And I either need a new pair of hands by tomorrow -- I can take mine off at the elbows until they heal -- or it's going to be a very long day.

Bonding with a 6-year-old

(This is a companion to my bonding-with-a-toddler post, which unfortunately disappeared.  I started out talking about the way we usually think about bonding, which is with a newborn, and all the physiological processes that help mothers and babies feel connected for life.  Our bodies help this along, from the love-hormones released during birth and breastfeeding, to the surge in scary-hormones a new mother feels whenever she hears a baby cry, which helps force her to fill the baby's cycle of need: need (hunger, pain, fear) --> cry --> attention --> solution of problem --> trust and attachment.  With adopted children, we don't have this hormonal dance to help us through this crucial time.  And, we are dealing with a child who already has their own attachment difficulties to work through.  When talking about bonding with a toddler, I was focused more on in some ways re-creating the infant attachment cycle.  This time, I am talking more about that second part.)

I could be totally missing the boat on this one.  I could be cruel and heartless and failing to supply what my daughter needs.   I could be over-thinking and mis-reading her signs.  But I feel like what my older child needs at this point isn't really actually love and attachment.

It's safety.

In the first few weeks we knew each other, Hibiscus glommed onto me like I was a long-lost relative and not actually a total stranger. She intellectually was able to understand, at least in some way, that she had lost her family and she had a chance to have a new family, and she wanted that family like anything.  She wanted to be touched and she wanted to wear all my things and she wanted me to look at her and praise her and she wanted to establish herself as an equal to my current child.

And then that was enough.  It was as though her immediate need for love and acceptance was full, was good enough.  She figured out that new-mom is a nice person, she gives snuggles, she sees Hibiscus and smiles at her, and that's what she needed to know.  Our relationship-building is basically in that same spot it was a month or two ago.

Now, don't get me wrong: I still touch her and give her hugs and kisses, and she still asks for them, and if there were no other children around I think she would love to sit on my lap half the day.  But that doesn't feel like it is the focus of our relationship, nor does it feel like it is moving forward (like it is for Buttercup, who is obviously still amazed by the touches and snuggles and changing in her trust and dependence on me). That might be partly because Hibiscus had more success, at some point in her life, in having an attached relationship with a parent and is able to emotionally step back into that role, instead of create it almost from scratch.  Or it could be because, in those six years, she has built up other needs that are even more overwhelming than perfecting a loving-parent relationship.  I'm good enough, and she can move on to those.

For instance, a healthy focus is that by age six, children are starting to become more peer-focused than parent-focused.  So she has spent energy developing relationships with the neighbor children and now with children at school, and she has put a great deal of energy into her relationship with Emerson.  It is worthwhile for her to put her charm and laughter into those friendships, because peer acceptance is developmentally important for six-year-olds.

Then, there are the other things that she missed on her way to becoming a six-year-old, that she needs to go back and fill up.  

I think her world has been chaotic and random, and in that random-ness have been a lot of bad things for Hibiscus.  She has gradually and in different disasters lost each of her parents and most of the rest of her family, and I think in the meanwhile have been a lot of small and large crisis that weigh heavily on a small child.  Also, young children think that the world revolves around them and that they therefore cause everything that happens in their world.  We hear this analogy often with children of divorce, that they believe that they caused their parents to split; but also, abused children believe they caused their parents to abuse them, abandoned children believe they caused their parents to abandon them, and so forth.  

So at some point, Hibiscus probably thought something like this: "I hit my sister even though I shouldn't, and then Daddy had to go to the hospital and we didn't have any food for a week."  A shy or fearful child might immediately become afraid of ever hitting her sister again and cry if she accidentally bumped her; a dynamic and curious child like Hibiscus is more likely to recover and try hitting her sister again and again, to find out if that was really the problem... and if it was, to just get the worst over with quickly.  A personality like Hibiscus's would rather throw the other shoe into the distance rather than waiting for it to drop.

So right now, in our family, it seems to me, that before Hibiscus is ready to go any deeper into an emotional relationship, she needs to test if her environment is safe.  She needs to see if I can really protect her.  She needs to know that the same result happens every single time.  She needs to know that what I say is true.  She needs to know if the rules are inviolable or if they change.  She needs to know my limits -- or rather, she needs to know my limits are limitless.  She needs to know how to make me angry enough to beat her, like everyone else in her life has done.  And most of all, she needs to figure out her own power.  Can she make me send her away?  Can she make me stop loving her?  Can she ruin this family, too?

Because she's had to be very grown up, and she wants to be very grown up, but inside she's a very little girl.  

And she knows that if she's in control, then she isn't safe.  So she needs to know.