Continued Progress at Zero, Zip, Zilch

Yesterday we seemed poised on the cusp of so many things happening, that I thought I needed to give another update.

Equally poised.  No actual progress on any front.

I was really hoping that the landlord would have some good leads on other apartments, and would have in mind something similar to this.  He was so helpful to spend half his morning taking me around to a couple of places, and I know he made a bunch more calls as well, but the places we saw were duds.  I have discovered something within myself in the last few weeks since I did the last apartment search: I am unwilling to move into a LESS nice place.  I just am not going to do it.  I can focus on the positive, like it will be interesting to live in three different places in the city, and that will give me a broader perspective.  I can think of the things that I would be happy to switch over to in a new place, like a refrigerator-sized fridge.  But I now realize, that if I have to move and find myself somewhere kind of grungy, or the kids have nowhere to play, or half the appliances are missing.... I am just going to go over the edge.  I really am.

We now live in a really nice subdivision of Kampala, which I have mixed feelings about.  I really miss being right in a real trading-center-y village, with a huge outdoor market down the street, and minibus taxis into town just past that, and walking past all the little fruit stands and tailors who all knew me.  This area is much more isolated.  I don't think I ever would have gotten to know Kampala in the same way if I had lived here, simply in terms of going out and exploring around, because it's less practical to do.  I am quite sure I wouldn't have been able to gain such a strong feeling for the culture.  I might not have had a million best friends in Ggaba, but I did have a lot of personal relationships.  I went to the same shops and fruitsellers every day, and people knew me.  EVERYONE knew me!  And that did lead to a million small but meaningful interactions, very different from someone just coming up to me on the street, asking me a bunch of questions, and I never see them again.  (Like happened today.)  So I miss that.  But in a wealthier suburb, I also feel more pigeon-holed, like I am obviously a rich white person and they know all about rich white people.  I'm glad I'm not in the even richer suburb next door, where almost everyone is rich; I enjoy the different houses and people doing different things around the neighborhood.  But I also know that that makes it a little bit safer here.  I don't stand out as much, and the kind of places where I would stay is not a big glowing beacon of "find the rich people here"-ness as it was in Ggaba.  (My apartment building was robbed at least four times in the five months I lived there, despite multiple layers of security, not including my insider-theft.)

Anyways, I don't want to leave this area, since at least by now I know it somewhat, and I'm not going back to the Ggaba area where I am quite sure Crazy Evil Lady bears a big grudge against me.  And in a month, if I'm still in Uganda, this apartment will be open again and I can move back if I want.  So I've decided that it makes more sense to pay too much for a month of feeling pleasant and safe, rather than move to some place kind of dumpy after two very good apartments.  In which case I think I would totally lose it, and my husband would have to buy emergency Christmas-priced airfare to come pry me off of a puddle on the floor.  And my children would be traumatized by the mama-puddle-fying.  And the airfare would cost much more than the apartment upgrade would have in the first place.

(In case you are curious, the kind of apartment that would suit the children and I would be about $800-$2000 US dollars a month.  No matter how grungy I felt like going, I think it would be just plain stupid to get a place that was not fully gated with 24-hour security, and that's about the starting price for that much.  Being white is just too much of a temptation here.  Being white with black children is also mildly dangerous, although probably not in the daytime with normal people around.)

So, we didn't get anywhere on the apartment search.  First, the landlord brought me to a couple of places.  Then on my way back home, I asked at a couple more places, just because they were there and looked available.  Nope.  I was planning on going out again to a couple other places thatI saw on the last search, but decided to save those for tomorrow.  I actually did an internet search, realizing that it might possibly come up with something because I'm in an upscale neighborhood.  I did have a couple of agents call me back, so I think they will show me something tomorrow.  If that doesn't work out, I can go the previous route and get the house-hunter guy to drive around in the car with me, making all kinds of telephone calls and pointing the driver in different random directions to where he hears a rumor of a vacancy.  So I'm far from the end of the house-hunting line, but I had really hoped this worked out the easy way.


As for the other projects.... the guardianship order is still sitting nicely in the judicial halls.  Apparently my lawyer checks in with the girl who types things up, who said it is typed up and the judge needs to sign it but was very busy today.  After she signs it, the lawyer needs to pick it up, and make the payment for the order.  After getting the payment, she takes her receipt (probably in triplicate) and goes over to a different office, where they confirm the payment and the signature and who-knows-what, and then put the seal on it, and then she can take it away.  Although apparently the problem is that the guy who puts the seal on it is often not in his office, and then it takes longer.  She said the guy who puts the seal on it causes many delays.  Sigh.  The amount of complicated-ness around here is really spectacular.  On the up side, the typist girl confirmed that the ruling is in our favor.  I suppose that's kind of nice to hear, although the judge was about as clear as she legally could be in the court that she would be ruling in our favor, so it's not really a great load off my shoulders.  Like actually being able to hold the thing in my hands would be.


And for the ID, I didn't make any progress with that, either.  In Ggaba, I could walk down to the village and have our pictures taken.  From here, I almost have to go back to the same place.  I'll need to pick the kids up from school and do it on the way home, and then bring them home on the minibus, which after all the apartment drama just seemed like too much to handle.


And the trip out of the country: no progress there either.  Except it looks like I'll have to get to both the passport office and the IOM appointment next week, which is making it harder to schedule.  On the positive side, it sounds likely that I will be able to get the girls' passports before the break, which would make it legally simpler to take them out of the country if I can't get it coordinated before the other parent leaves.  Except for the part about actually, physically taking them.


And the kitten.  The kitten is not making the right sort of progress; the kitten thinks he lives here now.  I must be growing jaded, because I can distantly think "oh, attacking that clothespin is pretty cute" but I have ABSOLUTELY NO INTEREST in having a kitten around.  My mind spends all its time on how I don't want the kitten in the bedroom or getting its claws into our clothes, and I move all the wraps out of the room and close the door.  And then Buttercup sees the kitten and screams in mortal terror, and I remove it from the house again.  The problem is that everyone keeps their doors open here to let the breeze come through, which it does very nicely, but apparently kittens can just saunter in too.  And as soon as the big kids come home from school, they spoil it rotten, as long as by "spoiling" you like two very excitable children hovering over you all the time.  Apparently this kitten has an iron constitution.




And the children.  Must Hibiscus talk all the time?  Really truly all the time?  And this afternoon poor Emerson was really getting the short end of the wild-Hibiscus stick.  I don't think I have extra sympathy for him because he's my birth child and I love him better, but I get sympathetic for him when she just natters away at him ceaselessly, and you can see him wilting as the day goes by.  He has started whining and complaining about her a lot, which was getting on my nerves.  And then I realized how often Hibiscus drives ME crazy, and I have to shut my eyes for a moment and steel myself very carefully before I turn around and say something.  And I am 33 years old, have a masters degree in education and child development, and walked into this with my eyes wide open, and poor Emerson is only four, has anxiety issues, and never wanted to share his legos in the first place.

This afternoon, I guess she started immediately by almost pinching him in the gate and then telling him she didn't care, which is exactly the sort of argument I am not going to get in the middle of.  But after he "reported" her I called Emerson over to me, and said that if he wanted to he could go and play by himself.  And that Hibiscus really wants to play with him, so if he just leaves the game when he doesn't like how she's acting, she will try harder to not drive him away.  He immediately took to this idea, left Hibiscus and got his legos out.

A few days ago I did a major re-sorting of the legos, both physically and logically.  There are several sets mixed together, which is okay because Emerson was making up lots of new trucks to build, but now it has gotten overwhelming.  I sorted them all out by color and put them in little baggies, so he can find a specific piece when he looks for it.  And I put an absolute moratorium on Buttercup touching the legos because she is too little.  And I told Hibiscus that she had to build her OWN set of legos, and she had to follow the book and make it properly a few times in a row before she can build something else.  Or she can not follow the book and make her helicopter into whatever she darn well pleases, but what she cannot do is pick up one of the other books, put together the first few pieces that are easy while meanwhile mixing up whatever order the pieces are in, then give up as soon as something doesn't work right, and start grabbing pieces from all the baskets -- including the ones Emerson has spent days sorting out -- stick them on randomly for a couple minutes, then think of something else, drop the whole creation on the floor, all the little bits scatter everywhere, and she has no interest in cleaning them up properly, let alone re-sorting the pieces.  I actually think doing legos would be really good for Hibiscus, but she needs to start small and stick with it.  The full lego basket is too much for her.  I told her that Emerson had one set and he did it over and over and over before he got any more legos and she needs to do the same thing, period.

So what does she do when Emerson comes over to his lego project?  Follow him, of course.  And not even get our her lego basket, but just kind of sit around and heckle him, and try and sneak putting together clandestine lego creations.  Again, I'd love her to build with legos and learn about all the lego-learning things, but not at the expense of Emerson's sanity.  And there is really no reason she can't do that with her own lego set.  Emerson finished his tow-truck and towed-car set yesterday morning before school (it turns out he can do his hour-long morning routine in about three minutes flat if he's trying to get to lego-time), and has been painstakingly sorting out all the pieces for his garbage truck since then.  He wants to put everything in a basket before he starts building.

When it was obvious that she wasn't doing anything at all except sit there and annoy Emerson, I told her that Emerson had found his own space to play, and she could now find her own, which was anywhere except where Emerson was.  After quite a bit of sulking she settled on doing something with Chutes and Ladders in the hallway.  The problem was when Emerson moved to get something and she screamed at him that he couldn't look and he couldn't come near and he couldn't touch and he couldn't even be near her.  My dear child, you are fully allowed to have your privacy, but NOT IN THE HALLWAY WHICH IS BETWEEN YOUR BROTHER AND EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE HOUSE.  The hallway is not actually the ideal place to sit if you don't want anyone to look at you, ever.  Although apparently it's pretty good if you want to scream at people to not look at you.

At dinner time, here were just a few things out.  Emerson likes to take care of his own legos, and he was diligently working on that.  Hibiscus was supposed to pick up toys off the floor.  Have I mentioned that Emerson is usually slow and careful and deliberate (and distractible) and Hibiscus is at least as distractible, but quick in all her movement and efficient when she actually does something?

Suddenly, violent, terrible screaming.  Emerson is hovering over the floor, which is covered with bits of lego, which used to be the tow-truck and car.  Hibiscus is looking shocked and guilty.  I asked if Hibiscus had bumped into him at whirlwind speed and knocked him down with his completed, glorious legos set.  More crying.  It turns out it was worse: Hibiscus had decided to pick up the legos herself, despite my telling her at least twice to leave the legos alone, at least four times that she needed to clean the toys off the floor, and Emerson keeping up a pretty much constant chatter about how no one else was supposed to touch the legos.  While he was neatly gathering things together, Hibiscus took the most exciting piece on the table, thought she was clearing it, and apparently ran full-speed into disaster.

Then, not two minutes later, she added injury to insult.  For some reason she decided she needed to rearrange all the chairs at the table.  I have told her over and over not to carry chairs on her head, and she obeyed the letter of the law but not the spirit of picking up chairs and swinging them around in a small apartment.  Still at full-speed (albeit burdened) she knocked a chair leg right into Emerson's rib cage.  He was not a happy camper.



So that is my day, in which we made no discernible forward progress at all.  Although it is possible that the guardianship order took some more invisible steps, as did Emerson and Hibiscus's relationship.

Part I: Definitions of Discipline

We are working on No One More Times, Yelling "NO!!" Is Sassing, and That Means You Too.  With a side of Respect Your Sibling's Special Time.  And in the Table Manners department, we are working on Sitting On Your Bum.  Of course, that doesn't mean that we're abandoning all our other ordinary manners, or things like lying to your mother are going to slip by, but those are the special projects of the month-ish (or whenever they get absorbed).  And if that sounds like it's overwhelming for the kids because we're working on everything at once, I assure you, it is NOT everything!

(Notice their flower names at the top of the page...)

In this post, I am going to write more about managing clear family policies and teaching discipline in a family of high-intensity young children.  It's something I think about every day, and sometimes every minute!  I am still frustrated with the older children's behavior, but we are making progress, together.  I will share some of the specific things that we are doing that work for the children, and I will share some of the ways that I think about discipline.

First of all, a little bit on what I think discipline itself is.  I think for all parents, but especially for those of us raising highly challenging children, that it is essential to be clear in our own minds about our own deeper philosophy behind what we are doing.  A clear definition of the end goal, and feeling clear about why we are making each choice, is the headlamp that lights our paths through all the swamps and dust-storms that our children constantly create around us.  It's not a floodlight that makes everything easy, but by constantly re-charging our mental batteries by thinking carefully about what and why we are doing, we parents can be the ones with the lights on, leading through the path of confusion.  Because our children are more confused than we are!

First of all, the word "discipline."  This is a word I use a lot, and to me it neither has negative connotations nor is it about the "no-and-punishment" side of parenting.  Discipline is discipleship, and discipleship is teaching, and teaching is what we do with our children all the time.  Discipline is the type of teaching that we do that is about areas like behavior and self-control, rather than areas like learning to read.  And we are teaching discipline to our children every moment, whether we are choosing to think about it or not.  What we model to our children is the most powerful message that we send!

I try to strengthen the message that I model by bringing it into the foreground and telling my children about myself.  I apologize when I'm wrong.  I talk about when I'm frustrated, and talk through looking for a solution.  I tell them stories about when I felt angry or upset, and how I dealt with it.  I try and focus on emotions that are within their little-kid palette of understanding, especially when there's an issue that they have been struggling with lately.  This is difficult for me to to do and I have to be conscious of it, not because I'm ashamed of making a mistake or getting frustrated at someone in line, but because I don't naturally show or talk about my emotions very much, and I'm good at hiding my emotions.  I have to step out of my comfort zone so my children can see that I struggle and have to deal with my struggles, just like they do.  Right now, I make it very clear about when I need to do something I don't want to do, or obey someone else's rules even though I don't like them, because this is a huge area of difficulty for my children.

Which leads us to the word "obey."  This is a word that was rife with negative Bible-belt connotations in the world in which I grew up, and my parents and everyone else avoided it entirely.  I don't any more.  Simple words are better for kids, and "obey" is a simple word for a lot of complicated ideas, including respect, cooperation, listening, delaying gratification, and accepting responsibility.  However, I define "obey" in the adult way, and not the child-only way.  Do we expect an obedient child to do whatever an adult says immediately and without question?  That is going to get him into a lot of trouble when he gets older, and people put pressure on him to do all kinds of things, including some we parents wouldn't like at all!  We can make it clear to children that they are allowed to use their heads and their words while they are obedient.  Even in the Bible, many prophets like Isaiah and Moses discussed issues with God, and brought up their concerns.  Moses took off his sandals in front of the burning bush, but he did not acquiesce immediately to what God had in mind.  If Moses can bring up his concern about his speech, and God can make a compromise of adding a brother-in-law to his team, then my children are being perfectly obedient if I ask them to set the table, and they say "may I please go get my game from outside first?" or "I don't remember where the plates are any more."  That's obviously different from screaming at me or running off, and that difference defines what obedience in children means to me.

Like in defining obedience, my husband and I think a lot about instilling values and habits that will serve our children well in the rest of their lives... which is often very different from what makes an easy and pleasant child!  I don't want my children to obey without question, because although that would make setting the table go a lot faster, it's not going to help them with peer pressure in high school.  We want to teach our children how to think and how to problem-solve, and I acknowledge that sometimes they're going to come up with a different answer than I have.  Tonight we discussed why Hibiscus had gotten a Sit, and I pointed out the rule on our chart and what she had done.  She agreed that she understood, and I asked if that was fair or if I was being a mean mama.  She mumbled that I was being mean.  And that was a fair answer.  My understanding of the situation was different from hers.

I love the Waldorf idea of "rhythm instead of discipline" (except obviously I think that rhythm itself is discipline, since discipline is positive), and it gets us a long way in this household.  And we are a Sousa march or a Strauss waltz -- no Copland allowed! -- as far as rhythm is concerned: everything that can be regularized is pinned into place.  But for my highly challenging children, a household rhythm isn't enough to contain the roaring rockets of their internal chaos.  So then the question is, consequences or punishment?

When I wrote about our Sits, some people commented that I seemed almost ashamed of giving out punishment and that time-outs are perfectly normal.  I am not at all ashamed of having consequences that my children don't like, but I want to be clear in my own mind about whether the Sits are consequences, or turning into punishments.  What's the difference?

I would say that a consequence is directly related to the particular event that happened, and that it allows room for the child to grow and move out of it.  A punishment is handed down from above, and the purpose is to make the child feel "yucky" (as my children say).  Let's go back to thinking about adult life: our lives are chock-full of consequences, but there are very few punishments.  If you go to a party and are laugh when someone gets hurt and grab all the hour d'oevers  from the snack tray, no one is going to take you into the other room and make you stay there for the rest of the party, but you're not going to have many friends or go to many more parties.  That's a consequence.  But because no one hauled you into the back bedroom, you have a chance to grow: you could sincerely apologize to the people you laughed at, and go into the kitchen and help make another tray of melon balls.  It wouldn't erase the negative, but it would change people's impression of you, and someone might invite you to a party another time.  Maybe.

Some parents think about that kind of consequence, and work really hard to make every consequence fit the misdeed exactly.  Some kid-problems have obvious kid-consequences if we simply step out of the way and don't fix it for them, but I don't go beyond the obvious.  My kids need regularity, and we do Sits for everything else and that is regularized.  I don't knock myself out thinking of the perfect matching consequence for every misbehavior.  But a Sit IS the natural consequence, because overall, their problem is that they need to calm themselves down and think before they act.  Or while they act, or after they act... in fact pretty much any thinking at all would improve most evenings around here!

Are punishments for children wrong?  I don't think they are entirely.  Again, in our adult life, there are some punishments.  A cop can give you a big fine for driving too fast, and I think a lot more people follow the speed limit because of the potential punishment than would without it!  But a punishment that is above and beyond the natural consequences of our behavior is rare, which makes it more powerful.  So if we parents find ourselves giving punishments a dozen times a day, that indicates to me that something is out of balance.  In fact, because young children are so spontaneous and have so little understanding of the world beyond themselves, I think there is almost nothing they can do to merit an actual punishment (being placed in a position to feel bad, instead of a position to grow).  My children are too young and too random to be acting maliciously, however frustrated their behavior might make me!

Something like a Sit or a Time-out could be a punishment or it could be a consequence, and it might look the same from the outside.  It is my job as a parent to be constantly asking myself, am I enforcing this in order to help them learn and grow, or am I trying to make them feel bad because they made me feel bad?  Do I want them to develop internal habits or just avoid something negative?  Right now, I do believe that the way we are doing Sits teaches them good internal habits -- like learning to STOP.  (I'm not sure the actual thinking part has made it into the equation yet... maybe next year!)  Both Emerson and Hibiscus get wound up until their internal accelerator is jammed down to the floor, and they can't learn anything else until they learn to stop that revving-up cycle.  Emerson and I worked on that for months this spring and summer, with me essentially stopping things for him over and over and over again, until he figured out how to slow himself down.  (We went home, closed books, put food back away, sat on roadsides, etc etc etc... that's mom putting on the emergency brakes.)  Actually, this is a little bit of a challenge right now, because it's very important to treat the two of them equally, but Emerson is moving a little bit beyond just plain needing to STOP, whereas Hibiscus definitely isn't.



Here is what I have learned academically about helping highly challenging children move beyond one challenging stage: repetition and consistency.  Here is what I have learned from actually parenting them: you have the same fight twelve million and fifty-two hundred times, until you go from thinking you are a particularly patient person to wanting to shake your child until their teeth rattle and then push them off a cliff, or at least out of the house you have to live in.  (That is not gratuitously violent imagery, that is a painfully honest description of raising two highly challenging children.)  But if you manage to make it through and be consistent and kind of calm for the fifty-two-hundred-and-first time, you suddenly realize that it's been days, or even weeks, and you haven't had that same argument any more, and they are cheerfully and pleasantly completing the challenged task.  It takes so long to notice because you are on your six millionth repetition of a different argument.


I am also learning that the more absolutely specific, exact, and clear my expectation is, the shorter the learning/arguing period is.  So we have walls covered with labeled drawings of routines and expectations and an entire home-made book of policies, as well as skits between dolls where the children laugh at how obviously one is misbehaving and diagnose the appropriate consequence, and certain phrases that we use over and over again.  Tomorrow, I'll write another post and go into detail about how we have used all those props to help the children gain footholds of understanding in the complicated world of Self Control.   And how frequently we have used the poster at the top of the page in the first 24 hours, and that apparently I should have put it up weeks ago...

Hibiscus Drives Us All Crazy

It's the middle of the afternoon, and I said we could have more birthday cake and presents if the kids could clear the table off.  No one started on that project, which seems like actual work, but Hibiscus found a piece of mostly-unused construction paper and made a birthday hat for Buttercup.  First of all she taped it into a cone shape, and when she put it on Buttercup's head the little girl started glowing with her unaccustomed special-ness.  Then she wanted to add a chin band, and Emerson helped her find materials and they all started singing "Happy Birthday" variations happily as they worked on the hat, while Buttercup fairly danced with pride.  Suddenly, Hibiscus decided it "wasn't good" and she ripped it apart and crumpled up the pieces, while the other children watched in shock and disappointment, and Buttercup's joyful little face melted away.

That's our Hibiscus!

Then she spent a while arguing, because I had already said I wasn't giving them any more paper or art supplies until the current mess had been cleaned up, but Hibiscus apparently felt that because she had made the mess even bigger while making all the other children upset, that she deserved an exception to the rule.  Which she didn't get, so she sulked.

Then she started cleaning one thing up, which is generally how it goes.  She wants to be helpful, but as soon as she starts she gets distracted or sees something new to get out.  In this case, she put some cheese from snack in the fridge, as I asked.  For some reason, Emerson was also near the fridge, and he pushed it shut, which Hibiscus thought was too rough, and she started scolding him.  One of our frequent scripts in this house is "who does Hibiscus need to worry about?" and the answer in "Hibiscus."  (In other words, stop bossing your brother and sister around!!!)  Hibiscus ignored me, and opened the fridge again and started fussing around with all the little bottles on the side, putting them in "perfect" order while telling Emerson how bad he was for messing them up.  I agreed that Emerson could have shut the door more gently, but thought there was no reason to stand there rearranging everything in the fridge meanwhile, so I told Hibiscus to get out of the fridge and Emerson to shut the door gently.  Twice.  Maybe three times.  Hibiscus said "I just doing this" and continued to adjust the bottles and then grabbed the door away from Emerson to shut it herself.  That falls under our Just One More criteria for a Sit, so she got one.  And she tried to sneak out of it when I wasn't looking, so she got a longer Sit.

Earlier today, I decided I would do just one little project that would make me feel better, so I had cleared off the couch.  It is the largest horizontal space in our main room, and it was totally heaped up with stuff.  Besides, then I could sit on the couch and do some work on the ipad while being kind of relaxed and drinking a cup of tea.  First of all I got mad at Emerson for climbing right on the newly-folded clothes I was arranging, and then the kids kept passing and dropping the extra parts from their projects on the nice clear couch.  After addressing each incident, I finally told the kids all to look at me, and to not put anything more on the couch today.  Period.

When I told Hibiscus she could come out of her Sit, she went straight over to the windowsill where Buttercup's birthday presents were sitting and picked up her most exciting new game.  I warned her that she better not be playing with her sister's new game without permission, and she said she wasn't.  Then she brought the toy bag over to the couch, and I said she had better not be putting anything on the couch, and she said she wasn't.  Buttercup was watching her lovely toy and her bossy sister with increasing worry.  Hibiscus then proceeded to take the toy that she wasn't playing with and dump the entire thing out on the couch that she wasn't putting things on.        


This is all in about the span of twenty minutes or so, but she is like this ALL.  DAY.  LONG.  She is constantly taking things from her brother and sister, which she is likely to break or just drop randomly in a different place.  She tells them what to do, and grabs things from Buttercup to do it for her and goads Emerson into getting upset, and then "reports" him for using his angry voice.  She ordinarily has a very good relationship with both siblings, although of course they have their little altercations, and they actually have a great deal of patience with her explosiveness.  One morning they were getting ready for school, Emerson and Hibiscus bumped into each other, and Hibiscus rounded on Emerson and screamed "DON'T BUMP ME LIKE DAT!!! DAT'S MY OWIE!!!"  I would have reprimanded her that it was an accident on both sides, and there was no call to scream, but luckily I am a little slow on getting between them.  Emerson turned and immediately apologized and asked to see her owie, and Hibiscus showed him her leg in that special aggrieved manner that young children reserve for small pains, and Emerson knelt down and admired it and sympathized, and then they both went on with their day quite calmly.

Buttercup is even more accustomed to being pushed around and adores every chance to be with her beloved sister, which is a little bit of a problem in itself and I am glad that she is gradually learning to stand up for herself.  Now in the last few weeks, Hibiscus is back to her early behavior in our house, when every time Buttercup says something she repeats it to the rest of the family, and every time Daddy or I address Buttercup, she answers quickly and loudly.  If we ask Buttercup to do something and she doesn't immediately jump into action -- which is pretty much always, because she is either going through a toddler-refusal, or just because she thinks things over carefully before beginning -- Hibiscus repeats it for her in Luganda, ordering her to do the thing in rapid-fire succession which simply confuses Buttercup, and then grabs the things out of her hands and starts to do it for her.

Or then there are times like this:  The morning after her birthday party, Buttercup wanted to look at her new book.  She sat in the middle of the floor to pore over it, and Hibiscus said "you want me to read it to you" and sat down next to her and took the book out of her hands.  Buttercup acquiesced because she likes spending time with her big sister.  But then a minute later I looked over, and Hibiscus is holding the book over Buttercup's head while Buttercup is reaching for it and starting to screech and sob.  Hibiscus saw me ready to interfere and protested "but she WANTS me to hold the book for her, Mama, she is wantin' me to do like dis!!"  Ah, no, my darling, I really think this is a misinterpretation of the situation!   Buttercup is becoming very capable of expressing her feelings about things -- not to mention understanding spoken English -- and yet Hibiscus will announce to the rest of us how Buttercup is feeling.  Which, coincidentally, always seems to be that Buttercup wants what Hibiscus wants, even at Buttercup's own expense.


But that's not the only thing she announces.  She tells me when my phone is ringing, or has the text-message sound.  If I don't come running immediately, she keeps telling me over and over, imitating the text-message sound.  She tells us when a Skype call is ringing.  She tells us when fire engines go by.  In fact, she informs everyone of every sound all day long, which I suppose could make her an excellent assistant if we were all deaf, but as it is she just makes us WISH we were deaf.

One day I asked her if she saw anything poking out of the side of my head, and that they were called ears, and since they were still in their usual place she might assume I could hear things on my own.  I tried to make a joke out of it, but I might have been too irritated to fully succeed.

But that's not all she says.  At the best of times, she is a talkative child, and there's nothing wrong with that.  As Daddy says, she gets a lot of practice in spoken English!  But when she's stressed or tired or excited or generally out of her precarious internal balance, she talks all the time.  And I do mean ALL the time.  One night I started counting to myself, mostly to give myself something to do other than run and scream, and I think the longest she ever went without talking was about three seconds -- and that was the exception.  Most of the time it is more like one or maybe two seconds; just long enough to hear what the next person might be talking about, so then she can tell them what they meant to say, or what she would say on the topic, or that they are wrong, or just because she was in the process of swallowing and was physically incapable of speech for a moment.  Only a moment, though, as she keeps talking through most of the eating process, even when no one can actually understand her because she is also shoveling food in at top speed.

I am a talkative person, as everyone knows.  My son has been a chatterbox since he could string words together, and does indeed have excellent speech for his age with all that practice, so I am used to talkative children.  And I'm the kind of person who doesn't mind some overlap in conversation, and with my good friends we will both be very talkative and sometimes be both talking at once, while also listening and one or the other pauses for a moment and then rejoins the story at an ebb in the other's conversation.  So, "talkative," I can handle.  I have experience.  You will have to trust me that Hibiscus is another category altogether.

So all through dinner, we have either a monologue or, if someone else gets a word in edgewise, she changes course and tells them what they meant to be saying.  We try to discuss conversation rules, but after a while it kind of puts everyone else in an exhausted coma, and no one else can think of anything to say anyways.  Then we get up from dinner, and she narrates what she is doing as she cleans up and gets ready for bed, along with telling everyone else what they should be doing, and of course every major or minor injury to body or soul she feels along the way... which are prolific, since she also is in her manic and awkward stage of the day.  Eventually we get to books.  As in, I read books out loud, and the children listen to them.  Except it goes something like this:

"Hedgie the hedgehog climbed --"
"Oooh, he is climbing, look he climb!!"
"--up to the hayloft ---"
"Mama mama mama, what a hayloft? What is dat one?"
"It's the top of the barn, see, right here.  -- the next morn ---"
"Look, dis one a bird!  Dere a bird in da sky here!"
"-ing to get a ---"
"One, two, tree, FIVE birds, YOU count Buttercup, one, two, no, you doing it WRONG I count da birds---"


I have my masters degree in education.  I know how valuable reading books is to young children, and that a significant part of the value is that it inspires conversations between adults and children.  The children get to explore and learn new vocabulary, and have practice talking about characters and counting objects and so forth, all with lots of interaction with their loving adult.  The conversation is an important part of the reading process.

Nevertheless, this is not what they meant.



I know in my head, that if it's been a hard couple weeks for all of us, it's probably been worst for Hibiscus.  She has by far the least internal regulation (even included Buttercup), so the move with all its change of routine has been the most difficult for her.  She has loved our guests, but they have come with more changes of routine and new personalities to figure out.  In the court room, she is the only one trying to balance complex relationships with both sides of people, and she's picking up all the emotions and understanding none of the logic.  She and Buttercup are more deeply disturbed by loving people having to leave (especially Daddy, but also Diane and it re-awakens how upset she is about Gramma and Bubba being gone), because they have more experience with loving adults leaving than loving adults coming back again.  So I understand.  It's enough to throw anyone off kilter, let alone a little girl who doesn't have much balance to begin with.

But lately, I've been pausing for a while at night to adjust her blankets and say a little prayer over her.  Because it's been easiest to love her when she's asleep.

Another Evening in the Monkey-House

This last week, our dinners have been along the lines of grilled cheese toast (until we ran out of bread), oatmeal, and cereal.  Seriously.  I've tried to throw in some apple or carrot sticks or something, but it's been very far from cooking proper food.  Tonight I was still tired, but thought I could step my mom-game up at least a notch or two.  Our new house has a rice cooker, so I put rice and lentils in that, and then actually went to all the trouble of making a vegetable sauce.  The gate-keeper at these apartments seems to grow a giant garden of mostly Swiss chard, and he generously gave us a large serving.  Hibiscus loves "greens," so I set about making a pot of greens in tomato sauce to serve with our rice.  I know that Emerson won't eat it, but both the girls are very excited about a proper dinner of "food and soup" and looked eagerly into the cooking pot.

While the kids were playing outside after school, Emerson and Hibiscus came running up to me with a branch of something that looked kind of like rosemary, but wasn't, and said that Hibiscus liked to eat it and would I cook it, and you're supposed to take the leaves off it and cook it.  I kind of brushed them off, and reminded them not to pick the plants.  It got dropped on the floor and abandoned for more interesting pursuits.

Then it was time to clean up before dinner.  Oh, what a long and painful process!  As you probably know by now, I do a lot of parenting-by-routine.  Waldorfians call it "rhythm instead of discipline," but I think of discipline as disciple-ship and not necessarily negative.  But I try to set up a strong and absolutely consistent routine, and it helps a lot to contain the internal chaos of my kids.  Any child benefits from consistent expectations, but Emerson and Hibiscus have very little internal regulation, so the external part makes a big difference, and it will eventual teach them self-regulation as well.

Dinnertime chores in a basket.  They took turns drawing them, to make it exactly clear who is supposed to do what, and even in what order.

And do you know what that means?  The last week has been chaos.  The new house does not yet have a routine, and the kids can't figure out how to find themselves in it.  Normally they are like pinballs shooting off the walls by dinnertime, but at least pinballs with an occasional purpose, and they really actually manage to get the table cleared and set almost every night.  But now?  Hibiscus has a vague memory of "clear Mama's stuff," so she picks up my computer keyboard and wanders around the house with it, opening and closing it, for minutes.  I tell her where to put it down, but it's in the kitchen instead of the bedroom like the last house, which she can't articulate to herself but she refuses to put it there and dissolves into wailing when I try and take it from her before she breaks it.  Emerson brings a piece of trash to the bin, but he has to spend time remembering where the trash is, so then on his way back he starts doing a balancing beam act on the broom instead.  And this table looks somehow much more messy than the last table, so both of them feel like the job of clearing it is impossible.

Somewhere in the middle of all the human pinballing, someone found the random herb on the floor and asked me to put it in the food.  I said we weren't going to put it in the food, and reminded them of the correct job.  I'd finished the sauce, which was just simmering, so I stepped into the bedroom to take care of something.  Emerson came running in eagerly, telling me that Hibiscus fixed the plant and now we get to eat it for dinner!  I went back to the stove, with Buttercup peering out of the wrap over my shoulder, and found little rosemary-like leaves all over the top of my simmering sauce.  I did not really feeling like adding a strange bitter herb to my sauce, and picked as many of them out as I could, while trying to direct the wild table-clearing-not-really, but many of the leaves were stuck in the other stuff in the pot.

This is a mess.  Don't step on that.  Don't drop that on the floor.  Please get the spoons.  And then I had a sudden suspicion.

I went over and asked Hibiscus if she actually knew what the plant was, and had eaten it before.  She wouldn't look at me.  I asked her again.  I took her hands.  I made her look at me.  Finally she shook her head; she had no idea what it was.  We had mixed a mysterious ornamental plant into our dinner.

I told her to come over to the stove with me, and she wouldn't.  I reminded her that I had never hurt her, and I wasn't going to now, and I took her hand and led her over.  I picked up the pot with one hand and held her fast with the other, and took her with me while I went outside and dumped the whole soup in the garbage.  I told her we couldn't eat plants when we didn't know what they were, because they could make us very sick, and I thanked her for admitting she didn't know what it was, so now we wouldn't be sick.  But we didn't have sauce.  She was devastated, and crumpled in a corner of the kitchen and wouldn't get up.

I served the rice and lentils.  Plain.  I put a little tomato paste in our bowls, hoping it would add at least a few vitamins or something.  I wasn't going to put any in Emerson's, but he insisted that he wanted some -- until he tried it, and then he told me that I had ruined his entire dinner and he was mad at me.  I added some nutritional yeast, but not on Hibiscus's.  I told her that since she had ruined the sauce, she didn't get any new sauce.  Then Buttercup tried hers and asked for cheese, which I didn't think was a bad idea because it was pretty miserably boring.  I didn't give cheese to either Emerson or Hibiscus, because they were both involved in the sauce-ruining, although I'm pretty sure Hibiscus was the ring-leader.  It seemed pretty reasonable to me: you disobey direct instructions to not put something in the sauce, thus ruining the sauce: you don't eat sauce.  Or sauce substitute.

Speaking of which, Hibiscus defended that she'd put the plant in the food because "Emerson told me to."  Emerson has also tried to get out of things because "Hibiscus told me to."  This appears to be a Möbius strip of excuses for doing things that they know are stupid!  And when I told them that it was stupid, they said that they would report me to their teacher for calling them stupid.  I said that I didn't call them stupid, and they were smart children, but sometimes smart people do stupid things.  And this was one of them.  In fact, I think a good criteria for deciding whether or not something is a stupid thing to do, is if you plan on telling your mother that your sibling told you to do it!

Hibiscus sulked in her corner while we all sat down to eat, but she has enough experience with me to know that sulking wasn't going to get her tummy full, so she came over and cleared the things left at her place and sat down with us.  We all sang the blessing, and she refused to sing with us, and said "now I do it myself" and sang quietly by herself after we all were done.  The strange ways that children decide to punish their parents!

By bedtime, and two helping of boring rice-and-lentils later, Hibiscus was in a much better mood, and got herself ready quite well.  She asked to pick out a book.  Normally each child picks a book and we read three (Buttercup's book, then Hibiscus's, then Emerson's), but if it is after 8 o'clock we only have time for one book and I pick it.  I told her she could pick something, and she picked the Madeline compilation.  Emerson had stayed in the kitchen to clear and wipe off the table, which was also admirable, so he was the last one ready.  I noted that it was after 8, and said since they both had been good we could compromise, and Hibiscus had picked the book and Emerson could pick the story.

Oh my goodness, this was so not acceptable!  Total hissy fit that Emerson had any say in what was going on.  Hibiscus refused to even get into bed with us and listen to the book, and then she wouldn't even get into bed for blessings.  She finally crawled into her place as I was leaving the room, I think because she knew that otherwise I was going to plop her there myself (and I would have).  The things kids think of!  As though refusing to listen to the book was going to break my heart and leave her victorious!

At least she didn't scream!  I can see in so many ways that she has come a long way in the last couple of months.  She got herself out of her sulking fit twice, she knew when I said that I was going to do something that I was really going to do it and reacted accordingly, and she didn't scream at the top of her lungs or break things deliberately.  But we have a long way still to go.  First of all, in being able to plan her actions and think before she does something, whether it's putting random stuff in the pot or trying to balance upsidedown on a barstool.  But also because she feels like everything is a personal insult to her, even if it is natural consequences or an accident or just totally random.  That makes little issues a lot more painful than they might otherwise be.  She spent a lot of time punishing her own self tonight.

And I wish I weren't using my frustrated voice so much!  Maybe next time I should just tell them to do the table, and go into my room and shut the door for ten minutes, and then just come out and eat.  I'll let you know how that goes!

Deal Breakers

Deal Breakers

I have always wanted to move my family to a foreign country for a while and imagined how that might happen.  Now it's turned out that we've kind of accidentally been in Uganda for a long time; long enough that it might be considered a temporary move, and I've thought about figuring out a way to move back again one day, perhaps when the kids are a little older and will be able to understand more and commit more to their long-term memories.  I think that's it's natural to romanticize being in a new place for the first few months, and then to become frustrated with it in the next few months, and eventually reach a greater acceptance of the true strengths and weaknesses.  So I recognize that I was idealistic about things this summer, and I'm currently in a grumpy funk that is probably more about me than about Uganda.

But emotional colors aside, I no longer have any ideals about moving back to Uganda while my children are young.

With better planning and a good project -- and children in a more stable stage of life -- I wouldn't need to be trapped in this feeling of isolation and being stuck that has made the last few months so difficult.  If I knew I were going to be here, and especially if I were involved in an organization, I could make connections and friendships that would be more fulfilling.  I've pretty much gotten over my frustration with cooking, between finding certain stores with certain ingredients and getting accustomed to the local fare.  (Although I would have to run a cheese-importing business!)  I've also gotten used to the transportation and how to get where I need to go, and if I didn't have a toddler who needs to nap, I would feel pretty flexible.  I'm getting used to the local manners and customs, and communicating and being friendly isn't nearly as stressful or tiring as it used to be. Some things are difficult, but I can make a decision to not let them bother me, or compensate in other areas of life -- being an introvert in a social society, lots of noise, different habits of friendship and expectations -- and life is never perfect anyways.

But the bottom line is, I wouldn't want to move back here because of my children.  There are too many expectations in this culture that I don't want my children to learn and internalize, and because the norm is so highly social, it is much harder to to present individual family values than it is in America.  As I see my primary goal at this point in life is giving my children a strong emotional, intellectual, and self-defining foundation, my perspective about living in a different culture is different than it would be for myself.

There's a lot that is positive about how children are treated here.  Children are very beloved, and we are praised (never censured) for being a "big family."   People don't mind kids acting like kids -- waitresses smile about the mess and other patrons laugh off my apologies for the noise.  I appreciate how babies are carried and nursed, and I like seeing daddies involved in caring for their kids, from babies in their arms to older children being lovingly taught the family jobs.  I appreciate the attitude of everyone helping out with the kids, and knowing when I am in my familiar environs, if my kids slip away from me, someone will step up and keep my kids from running out the door or wrecking disaster.  I appreciate that other adults will remind my children to listen to me, and to do their family duty -- often children listen better when hearing a new voice.  I like how easy it is for my children to make friends, and how many adults can engage children thoughtfully and lovingly; every National Forest guide has immediately directed their information at child-level, and even the dance shows have a focus for children.

On the other hand: the shaming, the lying, the threats, and the absolute expectation of conformity.  These negatives are so overwhelming that they are deal-breakers in terms of the foundation I want to give my children.

(I could also add in the beatings and physical punishment, which is highly prevalent here.  I don't include it as a top problem only because it is possible to avoid, as people seem to respect that a white woman doesn't want other people to beat her children.  We have also found a school which generally avoids physical punishment, which is rare.)

I work very hard to teach my children honesty, problem solving, personal responsibility, and kindness.  They receive dozens of examples every day of how to NOT do all these things, and I can't shield them from it.  They ask me questions that I have to answer my telling them that I think their teacher or anther respected adult is just plain wrong, which I hate doing. There is much to respect about these people, and I don't want to undermine their authority; I want my children to have role models.  But when they say "but Teacher said this; why did she lie to me?" what else can I do?  It gets to a point where the only true answer is "that is a lie, and I wish she hadn't said that."

To me, the worst is probably the shaming, because it is so prevalent.  Any kind of undesired behavior is quickly shamed, from jokingly to very publicly.  My children are probably each made fun of at least half a dozen times a day.  When Emerson wants to hold my hand and is afraid of leaving me to get on the bus in the morning, even if he is actually getting on the bus properly, if he shows any emotion about it, the bus driver says things like "you promised me you would be a good boy today," "why are you being so naughty this morning again," "big boys don't cry, are you a little baby?", while the children on the bus eagerly look out to see if they have a victim for their favorite taunts: "is Emerson crying again?", "look at little baby Emerson," "Emerson is being like a girl!" and so forth.  Meanwhile, little Buttercup gets told by the helpful cleaning lady, "you are a bad girl" when she drops something or makes a mess, or if she tries to climb up something and slips down, she is warned to not do it again.  At school, most of the formal discipline strategy is shaming: sitting on a high stool or having to eat with your back to the rest of the class, or otherwise being isolated in a very public way.  In this way, the children are naturally taught to shame each other and make this isolation painful.  It fits in very well with the natural meanness, selfishness, and fearfulness of childhood, and in every case I have seen, the children gleefully take the punishment several steps farther than the adults would have, which is silently condoned by the adult authority.

To my older children, the lying is the worst, probably because they are in a very literal phase of life.    The constant little betrayals and infinitely painful to them, and I see how they work back to make the shamings (and the beatings) more powerful.  Some lies are small and seem insignificant; for instance, for a while we happened to be leaving the school at the same time as the two junior teachers, and we followed the same route for part of the way.  The children were delighted at this special time with their teachers, and the teachers indulged them by holding their hands and admiring their little stories (see above, where I appreciate the natural attention that adults bestow on children).  The children invited their teachers home with them and the teachers agreed, but when our paths diverged they went their own way, to my children's shock and disappointment.  On succeeding days, they still insisted they would come home with us, and even when Hibiscus asked "for real? are you lying me?" they replied "I am not lying you! I visit you today!"  Why, why, why bother?  Why make such a big deal out of saying things that aren't true?

Adults also lie to children to get them to stop crying or calm down.  Apparently there is no cultural tolerance for crying here.  I guess that many Americans don't like to hear a child cry either, and maybe I have an unusual attitude towards it; I find that in most cases, a child whose tantrum is ignored will get over it more quickly than a child who gets a lot of fuss.  After I take normal measures to comfort the child, I leave them alone... but if anyone else is around, they will take over for my "lazy" parenting.  When Emerson was upset about not getting something that he couldn't have, our neighbor offered to take him out for ice cream, or go on a special ice cream outing the next day, and would go into details about the outing until he started to pay attention to her instead of his fuss.  When I took her aside and mentioned quietly that we had plans for the next day or something, she waved me off and said she hadn't the slightest intention of actually taking him to get ice cream.  The first day that the older children went to school, Buttercup became very distressed and wanted to put on her shoes and find them, and started to cry when I let her put on her shoes but said we weren't going to get them, and offered alternate activities.  She wasn't ready to think about doing something else, but as soon as I left her alone, the cleaning lady offered to take her for a walk to go get her baabas.  Buttercup quickly stopped crying and allowed Miss S to pick her up and carry her around.  Miss S took her around for a few minutes, distracting her with looking at pretty flowers and fruit, and then brought her back inside.  The distracting walk was a good idea, but in my opinion it didn't need to start with the several-times repeated promise to go to her baabas' school.

But lying takes a much more sinister turn, as well: lying threats are often used for punishment.  When Hibiscus was acting up around a family friend, he turned on her and said very seriously, "your mama may not beat you, but I will.  Stop that, or I will beat you."  I am quite sure he was bluffing and never would have beaten my child.  One day at school, Emerson had gotten seriously dirty in the sand box -- which I don't mind at all, but I sent him to wash hands at the tap before going home.  One of the teachers saw him, and told him if he got that dirty again, she would take off all his clothes and give him a shower in front of all the other children.  He told me after school the next day that he hadn't played in the sand, because he didn't want to be naked in front of the other children.  When children misbehave at school, they are told that they won't be allowed to come back, or that they will be sent home immediately, by themselves.  Once Emerson was taken outside of the school gates and they closed the gates and locked it on him, telling him that he had to go home by himself.  After he screamed and cried, they "forgave" him and let him back in.  It is apparently a common threat that a bogeyman is going to come get a naughty child and take her away, and parents will put a child outside and call the bogeyman.


All this is made worse, because absolute conformity is expected.  There are not alternate ways to do things; individual expression is not appreciated; emotional expression is not allowed.  Any deviation from the norm is immediately rewarding with shaming and threats.  Because the "rules" are so clear, even little children learn them and are quick to pounce on their peers -- even for behavior that they can't manage properly themselves.  Because everyone is unsuccessful at being perfect, they all have been shamed, and they are all quick to jump on the bandwagon to shame and punish someone else.  Little children might be able to reflect the face of God, but they also have an awful lot of intrinsic selfishness!  In my American society, we are generally of a consensus that children shouldn't hit each other, and we teach them this value very strongly in their first toddler playdates, so by school age it is only very out-of-control children who use violence.  But children naturally want to use their bodies to get what they want, so around here middle-sized children are constantly slapping and kicking the younger ones, and physical altercations are common in play.  They also use all kinds of insults, rude noises, and whatever they instinctively feel will get the biggest reaction.

Thus, crying is unacceptable.  Being clumsy is unacceptable.  Being loud is unacceptable.  Getting dirty is inappropriate.  Feeling shy is inappropriate.  Getting hurt and being upset about it is not allowed.  Disobedience is not allowed, nor is getting out of line or talking in class or dozens of other things.  I don't disagree with all these values -- I don't appreciate disobedience or talking in class, either.  But all the ways of being an object of shame also add up to not wanting to be different in any other way, and I can see that is difficult to be more-than-average smart or more-than-average creative, even those are actually values that are strongly appreciated in this society.



In America, pundits say we have "the mommy wars," with parents diverging strongly and sometimes negatively about issues such as stay-at-home-mothers, homeschooling, cry-it-out, co-sleeping, organic food... the list goes on and on.  Whatever you choose, you can find books and bloggers who argue that it's a terrible choice, and a community of mothers who thinks your way is the only reasonable option.  Here, there are no Mommy Wars.  It's more like Mommy Annihilation.  There is exactly one right way to parent, and if you are trying something else, you are either met with stone-cold silence... or of course the old tactics still work well, and the divergent mommy can be publicly shamed.

The school our children attend is trying to incorporate some more modern methods of teaching and ideas about child development into their curriculum and philosophy.  (I think defining "modern" as somewhere in the last hundred years or so... but when was Maria Montessori? it might be 150.)  So they have some elements of child-directed learning and exploration, the idea of children working at their own pace on what they need to know, and some, um, less painfully out-dated methods of discipline.  And they are trying to involve middle-class parents in their children's education, instead of the parents just turning the children over to nannies and television for the whole day.  I am constantly amazed at how most of the parents, who are paying a high price to send their children to this specialized school, and obviously dote on their children, totally ignore all their advice and outreach.  For instance, the teachers are hoping that the children will have some kind of educational toys as home, such as blocks or coloring books.  They were selling toys like this at the Family Day, to make it easier for parents to get them.  I overheard a teacher warmly and gently trying to convince a parent to get a coloring book along with a toy car she had selected, talking about how it is good for their future writing skills, and fine motor, and so forth.  The parents just shrugged and said their child didn't want to hold a crayon, so why have one in the house, and walked away.  Despite all the special activities and personal calls to become more involved, at the special Student-Led Parent Student Conferences yesterday, probably only a quarter of the children actually had a parent show up over the course of the day.

No one has gone to the trouble of paying me for my advice, so instead of just getting ignored, I am told how to behave properly -- told with varying degrees of overbearingness.  I need to put Buttercup in school.  I shouldn't carry Buttercup, she is old enough to walk.  I should beat Emerson when he runs too far, and I should beat Hibiscus when she throws a fit.  I should do everything for Buttercup if she finds it too hard on the first try.  I should feed them this and not that.  They don't need to go to bed that early.  There is no reason to make them nap or do chores if they don't want to.  Buttercup isn't uncomfortable because black children don't mind being squashed like that.

Sometimes I receive this unending stream of instruction in a polite undertone, such as "if it were mine, I would give that child a good beating" or "here in Uganda, we don't carry our children when they are that age."  These are usually delivered with the head respectfully turned away to avoid potentially negative eye contact, but with clear censure and no possibility of an alternate acceptable opinion.  Sometimes the active public shaming is called into play, such as the woman who followed me around the grocery store.  She declared that if a child could request an apple she was too old to walk, and I didn't immediately unwrap Buttercup; so she followed us around, loudly telling me to "put that child down" repeatedly, so even if I didn't obey, she brought an appropriate amount of attention to my poor parenting practices.  With smaller issues, other adults just "fix" the problems I am not addressing properly; they carry Buttercup over stairs I think she can learn to walk, they give the children the things they are fussing for, they threaten or bribe the children into better behavior, they shame them for getting dirty, they tell them what they can eat for dinner or a treat, they give them candy to silence them, they clean up their messes, they carry their backpacks or fix their shoes or give them extras.  The neighbors, strangers on the street, vendors and storekeepers, the children's teachers, the cleaning lady, family friends... unless we stayed in our house and locked the door, there is no way to avoid all the people who are eager and willing to do the "right" thing for my children, and hopefully teach me how to behave as well.

My practice of helping children to learn to be responsible for themselves in an age-appropriate manner, and take consequences for their actions, is totally unimaginable.  One morning I was sitting across the room from Buttercup, who was trying to put a "blanket" over her dolly because she had chosen a large wrap.  She was getting frustrated, so I showed her how to hold the wrap from the edge, but then gave it back to her and sat back down.  She started yelling at me to come do it, and I calmly told her that she could do it herself and reminded her how.  So she told Miss S to come do it for her, and Miss S promptly obliged.  I stopped her, and told her specifically how I thought Buttercup could learn to do this skill on her own, and I wanted her to be able to figure it out.  Miss S seemed to kind of understand, and she obeyed my direct instruction to not do it for Buttercup.  I would have to repeat this a hundred times a day to be allowed to make my own parenting choices -- except most adults anticipate the confrontation, and work behind my back.


With young children, it matters very little what you say, it matters what you do.  Children learn by imitation, and they are always watching.  So I can talk myself blue about being honest, but they see adults lying over and over again.  I can make an inarguable family policy of "no hurting," but as soon as they leave the house they see people hurting each other and getting their way.  I can read them books and tell stories about children being true to themselves and standing up for each other, but they come home and tell me definitely that boys don't get sad, everyone likes the same things, only babies get scared, and their friends deserved getting punished.  I can set it up so my children figure out what the consequences for their own choices are, but someone will come along and save them from getting cold or having to carry a heavy backpack.  Even the choices I am allowed to make -- like not putting Buttercup in school yet -- my children get to see me ridiculed and scolded for.


Every culture, including our own, has positives and negatives.  I wanted Emerson to get to learn about another culture and go to school with local children; I'm not going to put up a fuss that he is picking up values I don't condone as well as becoming less stuck in his American-thinking.  I wanted to know more about my adopted children's birth culture; I'm not going to be aghast that it's different from mine.  I didn't expect my parenting style to be mirrored or even respected while in a foreign country.  Nor do I think that everything about America is perfect -- far from it!  But Mommy Wars or not, at home I have a lot more freedom to parent my children in the way I think best.

And I think it's about time to be getting home.  And when we come back, it will be for a visit, not another stay of months and months... until my children are old enough to discern their own right from wrong, and stand strong in the face of criticism.

Or at least, not scream "you look like a mon-key!!" when they see a little boy crying.

My Children Decide to Be Very Helpful

dinner

Today on the walk home, the kids decided that I wasn't listening to them and I had to go into a Sit when we got home, and I wasn't allowed to get up and they would do all the work and make dinner.  Hm.  Sounds like quite the punishment for a mother, doesn't it?

Hibiscus kept telling me "I'm gonna cook it, I know how for cookin' it, and I am not lyin' you, I am NOT lyin' you!"  I finally had to ask her why she thought I was so suspicious about me thinking she was lying to me!  (I think that was too many pronouns and she couldn't quite figure out the question, though!)  I don't usually let the kids near when I'm cooking, not because I think they can't do it, but because with a tiny house and a lot of children, I'm afraid someone is going to end up stabbed with a knife or getting pushed into a burner.  But they cooked a little bit with Gramma, and I think everyone is getting calmer than they were, so I let them have a try.

The cooking part was pretty sweet.  They decided to make noodles and vegetables, and I set them up at the table so they weren't all on top of each other (and the stove).  They picked out carrots, tomatoes, green beans, and Swiss chard, which isn't exactly what I would have grabbed, but whatever!  I moved my ipad over to the corner of the table to stay in my appropriate sit while keeping an eye on them, and "secretly" made the pasta and cooked sausages.  Hibiscus and Emerson dedicated themselves with great enthusiasm to washing and chopping the vegetables, while Buttercup sat there, snapping beans and eating them.  And everything else Hibiscus chopped.  It is one thing to snack on vegetables while mama chops (which she usually does), but I had to keep moving the bowl to Hibiscus's other side so Buttercup didn't devour the entire dinner before it made it to the stove!  Besides, I thought Hibiscus would throw a fit if she looked down at her bowl of painstakingly chopped tomatoes and found it empty!

Emerson worked very hard on the carrots, which were very dense for a little boy with a dull knife.  Hibiscus made much quicker work of the tomatoes, and she remembered to wash the greens properly -- one at a time, not just a quick splash on the whole bunch.  Hibiscus carefully poured the things one at a time into the pan, although she REALLY wanted to start with the tomatoes and not the firmer vegetables that needed a longer cooking time.  Both of them were intent enough on their work that they accepted my direction about how to do it properly, such as not stabbing things with the point of the knife.  Hibiscus became a scientist about poking vegetables with a fork to see if they were soft enough to add the next ingredient, while Emerson carefully chopped dill with the scissors and cut up three cheese sticks in a bowl.  "But they don't go IN the sauce," he insisted.  "They'll be right here in this bowl and you can put them on TOP if you want."

No one stabbed their sibling.  No one impaled themselves. The younger kids were busy enough with the vegetables that only Hibiscus stirred things on the hot burner, and since she wasn't on Manic Insanity Mode, she actually is old enough to stand on a stool and stir sauce without randomly falling into the gas flame.  There were no trips to the hospital, or even the first-aid kit.  So in that sense, dinner was a success.

But it was an hour and a half late.  Anyone with young kids probably knows what a problem that means, but as I have said, I keep things really consistent, and that means dinner at the same time, so it's a REALLY big deal.  The main problem was when I made them do their before-dinner chores, like they have to do every day, because I don't make exceptions about our routines.  That is, short of aforementioned emergency hospital visits, which do come up on a regular basis, it appears.

There is general chaos with kids running in all directions, but surprising little of the things on the table are jumping into their hands and disembarking at their correct locations.  Hibiscus feels like it is necessary to put a can of rocks on her head and "do" her chores while balancing it.  I tell her to stop, because she's going to drop it, and we'll have rocks all over the house, and she'll have to clean them up.  She glares at me and says she won't drop them, and then she grabs the can and runs off.  I turn around a minute later and she has the can on her head again, and this time, it promptly falls off and rocks go everywhere.  She gives me a shocked look.  I say "I told you that the can would fall off your head, and now it fell off your head.  Pick up the rocks, and then you still need to clear the table."  I don't say things like this because I like to rub in that I was right; I say them because she honestly has no idea of cause and effect, and she really REALLY doesn't realize how her behavior causes any reaction in the world.  She thinks that everything that happens, someone else does TO her.  But we are making progress, because she does pick up the rocks instead of making the argument (violently) that the rocks put themselves on the floor and have nothing to do with her and there is no reason for her to clean them up, because she doesn't need to do chores and would rather play anyways -- which was her position, although not in so many words, for the first few weeks of family life.  Actually, as she cleans up the rocks, I hear her muttering, "Mama said the rocks fall down, and the rocks fall downed."

There is a flurry of arguments about going outside to clean up the outside toys, since it is getting dark.  Each child does a lot of whining and complaining, and some time when the other one is making a bigger fuss, runs out and grabs one or two small things.  Then when I tell them to collect the rest, they announce haughtily that THEY have been working hard and already done their share, and the rest is up to the other sibling.

In the meanwhile, the darkness is actually falling, and the Hibiscus gets REALLY upset about going outside alone.  In the duskiness, they finally get booted out together to make one last trip.

Back to inside chaos.  Hibiscus goes back on her stool and announces that she can't clean up, she is busy doing her WORK of stirring the sauce, she's BUSY.  I have long since put the finishing touches on dinner and turned the stove down.  I tell her that's not her job right now, and when she ignores me I lift her off the stool.  She screams.  Then she dedicates herself to sweeping the floor, which has a lot of vegetable bits but is not really necessary in order to serve dinner.  I'm not sure if she's purposefully avoiding doing what I'm telling her to do to prove she can do things her way, or because sweeping the floor sounds more fun than clearing the table, or because by this point she has the attention span of a moth, and the broom was the nearest lightbulb.  She gets things kind of swept, and as she works on the other side of the table Buttercup gets the small broom and the dustpan, and sweeps it back all over the room again.  Hibiscus turns around and throws up her hands in frustration and tries to explain to Buttercup why not to do that, while Buttercup sets to work on Hibiscus's next pile.  (I think Hibiscus is starting to realize that I don't just enjoy putting Buttercup in the wrap to make her cry; she really does make getting things finished very difficult!)  I offer to put Buttercup up on my back, but both older children protest, so I leave her.  I think they are feeling a great deal of solidarity after sitting together with their joint effort of vegetable chopping.

Meanwhile, there is a little bit of cleaning and clearing happening, slowly.  Emerson has mostly been working at his tired and distractible pace, but gradually making progress, and not making much fuss.  I have helped them with the dinner part of the mess, but I am refusing to do anything about the few items left on the table, because that's their chore every night, and they really are capable of doing it.  Hibiscus starts into the old argument that this-and-such isn't hers, and that one is mama's, and she didn't make the mess and she's not going to clean it up. This is another difficult lesson about being in a family; we help each other out and we work together.  This one is even more difficult for her then realizing that she has made a mess herself and needs to clean it up, but she's been doing much better in the last few weeks.  She puts a few things away with bad grace and some banging -- and I later find them piled on the bed, which is not the point of clearing the table!  

I was helping Buttercup help with something which did not actually make the mess worse, and I find Hibiscus back with the broom, but after a couple wild sweeps she starts dancing around the room with it.  Believe it or not, we have actually encountered the issue of waving brooms and umbrellas and mops and other large objects around above our heads in the living room, and we have a policy about it: brooms go on the floor, or they go away.  Or someone will get hurt.  I remind Hibiscus about this policy, and she screams and darts away from me.  

And promptly WALLOPS herself on the head with the broom.  

Because I was in the vicinity, she wails that I beat her head with a broom. I might have touched the broom to start to take it from her, but all the force was hers, and it is WHY WE DON'T WAVE BROOMS AROUND IN THE FIRST PLACE.

For the next fifteen minutes or so, I potty Buttercup and set out dinner while Emerson sets the table, and Hibiscus screams bloody murder.  She finally decides that Emerson is getting to do a fun table-setting job, or she is getting tired of sitting around screaming, or she remembers that she isn't going to eat unless she does some work.  Our dishes are all stored in two very large sliding drawers under the cabinet, which is nice insofar the kids can reach and be in charge of everything for setting the table.  Hibiscus looks for something in the drawer, and doesn't find it immediately.  She bangs the drawer, and then bangs it again, and then starts to swing her whole weight back and forth on the drawer to get more bangs.

I tell her to stop immediately or she'll break something, and fall.  (And for those of you who might point out that I should stop talking and just go enforce the point, I had my hands full on the other side of the room, and things like this happen much more quickly than it takes to describe them.)  She says she won't stop and she won't break anything and she won't fall.  I am a little out of patience (cough cough, just a little!), and I say quite firmly that I TOLD her that the rocks would fall, and they fell, and I TOLD her that the broom would hit someone, and the broom hit her, and would she STOP BANGING THE DRAWER ALREADY BECAUSE IT WILL BREAK.

She actually stops.

At some point, we actually ate dinner.  It was pretty good, or at least it was fine; I didn't really care by that point.  Emerson didn't eat any of the sauce he had helped to make (that theory is totally bogus when confronted by the pickiness of my son!), but he did eat the six green beans he had prepared for himself. He didn't even put any of his carefully prepared dill on his noodles, although he was very just about distributing the tiny chunks of cheese.  Hibiscus was horrified that she couldn't see any tomatoes in the sauce despite cutting up lots of tomatoes, and didn't quite believe me when I try to explain how tomatoes kind of melt, especially when clearing the table takes an hour or two and the tomatoes are cooking the whole time.

Isn't it wonderful when the kids have the motivation to take over some of their mother's chores, and mama can put up her feet while the kids prepare a simple dinner?

Maybe in another year or two.  Or three.  Five?   I think if I really want assistance, I need to wait until Buttercup is old enough to just do the whole thing herself!

Glimpse of Bedtime

We're back to one-person getting-ready-for-bed routines.  Supposedly, it works like this: I get Buttercup ready while the big kids prepare themselves and Hibiscus gets in the bath, then I put Buttercup on my back to brush Emerson's teeth as Hibiscus gets out of the bath, I run a new bath while she dries off and Emerson undresses, I brush Hibiscus's teeth while Emerson washes himself and then I do his hair while she gets her jammies on and combs her hair.  I can put Buttercup down and set up the bed while Emerson dries and be-jammies himself.  It's a good system because the big kids can do enough for themselves that we can alternate what I do for one while the other one finishes a chore on their own.

Needless to say, it didn't work like that.  They need handlebars so I can drive them to the next station.  The low point was when Emerson was in the bathroom, watching Hibiscus throw water around instead of doing his own chores.  Buttercup was wiggling like an entire batch of popcorn, so it had been quite some work to grab her various bits and put them in her pajamas, when I realized I hadn't put her on the potty.  So I scooped her under one arm, kept her giggling, and popped her on the pot.  At that exact moment, Mr. Standing-around-in-the-bathroom REALLY had to go.  Really REALLY mom!  Right now!  To demonstrate, he pulled his weiner out of his pants.  Look, mom, it's dribbling on the floor, I'm peeing on my own feet, I REALLY have to go!

I have my doubts that the visual aid was necessary.  Especially since Buttercup was actually done by that point.