Tag Archives: Parenting

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The Work-at-Home Covenant

Working mom

Working mom (Photo credit: rankun76)

I’ve been working on an article about the balance between being home with kids and trying to work at the same time. I think this is something that needs to be addressed for frustrated moms out there (like yours truly) who sometimes feel helplessly at sea. But it seems like the articles already out there fall into one of two categories: advice from people who clearly don’t have kids (or are empty nesters and have forgotten) or are written by frustrated moms who just need a friendly reader to commiserate.

Yet there are successful work-at-home moms who make it look so easy. I’m sure it’s not rainbows and unicorns for them all the time, but they’ve turned their time at home and considerable talents into profitable careers. J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone while she was out of work and a single mom. Madeleine L’Engle stayed at home and wrote, even during a decade-long drought, in which she worried she would never be published again.

So while I’ve wrestled with my own situation (which is more often work-on-the-go than from home), I’ve tried to piece together what I do that works and what doesn’t, aspiring to be as successful as one of these greats. And it was actually my son who made me realize what the most important aspect is. It was a truth that’s glared at me for months, but sometimes it takes the brutal, innocent honesty of a child to bring it home.

Granted, it was a rough week for us. My husband was gone for five days, something that only happens a couple times a year, if that. I really admire single moms, military wives, and other women whose spouses travel frequently. We made it, but it wasn’t pretty. I cook most of our meals from scratch, and Thomas often takes the boys outside to play while I cook. Or he helps me in the kitchen. On my own, my kids ate a lot of chicken nuggets, I’m afraid, and I rarely got to eat before they were done. Chores went unfinished, and my temper got shorter and shorter: there just wasn’t time for me to do what I needed and sleep and play with my kids. And we’re talking bare minimum here. Forget reading a book or doing anything fun for me.

One night, after getting the little guy down, I sat at the table with my laptop, writing an article. And my elder son came to me and asked for something. I am ashamed to say I don’t remember what it was – I was barely paying attention then, immersed as I was in my work. What did catch my attention, though, was what he said next: “Mom, sometimes you’re not very fun. You don’t spend enough time with us.” I stand condemned.

No matter how many hours my husband works, he gives our kids one-on-one (or one-on-two) time when we’re together. The boys eat it up. They crave time with their daddy and miss him when he’s gone. The way things have been going, I wonder if the boys feel the same way about me. Something has to change. I don’t want to look back over my mothering years and realize I missed a number of small, meaningful moments while I wrote another article.

Last week was an exception, but it’s no excuse. I’ve had too many days recently in which I allowed myself to become a passenger in my own life – a passenger who barely even looked out at the scenery. And it’s my life. If I am imprisoned by my choice of lifestyle, I can only blame myself because I am the warden and hold the keys.

Because freelancing is so open – so “free” – it’s easy to get swept away in the current of work and never stop. And since there are no paid vacation days, no sick leave, and I don’t make a salary while I apply for jobs that may or may not come to fruition, I sometimes feel an almost self-denying need to write while everyone else takes time off. The idea that I could squeeze in full workdays every weekend was seductive. With no need to rush out the door for school and with most of my other chores finished during the week, I could just sit around and write all day – and let Thomas deal with the kids. First of all, that’s not fair to him, and it makes me unavailable to all three of them. Second, I ended every weekend looking back on everything I didn’t get done and feeling like I’d let everyone down. I’ve heard freelancers say to set a schedule, and the longer I’ve been at it, the more I agree. It doesn’t have to be nine to five (and in my case, it’s not going to be), but I do need some parameters. At some point, I need to say, This is my family’s time; writing can come later.

I have preached about this before – to others as well as myself. But for me, walking the talk is more than just saying, “I need to.” My almost immediate mental turn-around – the decision to not let my writing interfere with my family – was akin to other life choices I’ve made. These are things I’ve decided to do, no matter the cost, like nursing my babies for at least twelve months, getting up early to exercise on weekdays, and cutting wheat out of my diet. This was more than a simple decision but what I think of as a covenant with myself. I write because I love it, which means it should feed me, not starve me. The only way I can keep on writing is to protect myself and my family from freelancer’s burn out.

I implemented the plan this week. I wrote during the day, cutting myself off at supper time. I still checked e-mail, and if necessary, I wrote after the kids went to bed. But one of the reasons I’ve been so irritated lately is that, along with having little family time, I’ve had absolutely no me time, no time to recuperate. So I’ve made sure to only write sparingly at night, allowing myself a little time to read for the fun of it.

When I received three assignments with a tight deadline on Thursday, I met my first challenge. I either had to write them all on Friday, or I would break my promise and work through the weekend. So I stayed up a little later, finished the assignments, and when I woke up this morning, instead of heading straight to the laptop, I went into my younger son’s room and helped him build a train track.

This little bit of structure – of making myself accountable – has helped me be more productive than ever, believe it or not, and extra conscious of my family’s needs. Work-at-home moms have to decide what’s most important and tailor their lives to their particular covenants. That doesn’t mean there won’t be rough days or emergency writing assignments, but there will be something to answer to. All the other bits of practical advice I’m saving for my article are secondary to this. If we work-at-home moms can’t define the purpose of staying home – and I certainly hope it has something to do with spending more time with our families – why did we choose to be at home to begin with?

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Communication Is More Than Maintenance Talk

Communication

Communication (Photo credit: P Shanks)

Talking to my husband has always been easy. As his side of the story goes, he “fell” for me on a high school chorus trip to New York City. On the bus ride home to Florida, we sat together and talked almost all night. It had never been so natural for him to talk to a girl before. I certainly didn’t think at the time that I was making waves, but I guess my conversational charms won him over. I have my parents to thank, who work together and communicate very well, and who also have always treated me like I deserve respect for what I say. Even when I was a child, they conversed with me like I was a human being, not a sweet little darling who says cute stuff. That means that they’ve listened to a lot of dreams and ideas that they knew were naive or unrealistic. It also means they’ve had to set me straight a time or two. Although I didn’t particularly appreciate my dad telling me, when I was an adolescent, that pursuing a career in acting was not the way to go, I’m glad for the candor and that we shared the kind of trust that allowed me to lay out my dreams.

I look at my own kids and hope that the lines will be open for us as well. Communication truly starts in the womb, which is why I listened to music that I wanted my babies to hear and talked to my pregnant belly. When I was expecting baby number two, I encouraged Peter to talk to him. He would put his mouth up to my belly and say, “I love you, Baby Ian. I can’t wait to see you. I’m your big brother.” I think that has a lot to do with why Peter is Ian’s absolute favorite person in the world. It’s also sweet to me that Peter often says he can’t wait until Ian can talk (more than the baby talk he is capable of now).

Some people’s idea of “quality time” with their kids is to hover and be overprotective. Others feel guilty for not being able to spend as much time as they would like and create events that are supposed to equal that imagined quality. But do whirlwind trips to amusement parks, occasional weeknight baseball games, or other activities that wear us out and wear us thin make up for the everyday interactions that should be natural and lead to life-long trust and closeness? I’m not saying that doing those things is bad, but they don’t make up for lack of communication. A good friend once observed that every time she saw a marriage deteriorate to the point that maintenance talk was the only communication between husband and wife, divorce was usually around the corner. It happens to parents and children, too, who find they have no reason to talk after the nest is empty.

But maintenance talk is necessary, isn’t it? Thomas and I keep very busy schedules and are often like ships passing in the night. “What time is your meeting?” “Will you be able to watch the kids?” “I need more creamer when you go to the store.” “We need to run by Target to pick up school supplies.” When the necessary becomes the only conversation in a household, however, relationships become fragmented. My favorite parenting book, On Becoming Baby Wise: Giving Your Infant the GIFT of Nighttime Sleep, recommends that parents have “couch time.” (Read more about my Babywise experience here.) If there is no other time in their busy day when parents can talk, at least they’ll have fifteen precious minutes to catch upon more than the grocery list. And the key is to have couch time around the kids, so they can see that their parents are important to each other.

I remember my college days, when I thought my life couldn’t get any busier (ha). I always took five courses at a time, and I attended summer semesters, too. I worked twenty to thirty hours a week, sang in the church choir, sang with a community chorus, helped found and edited the journal Fiction Fix, attended numerous workshops and events for that same journal, and drove almost thirty minutes one-way to Thomas’s house four or five times a week. It was all a part of my plan to get my degree as quickly as possible while continuing to stay active in all the activities that were important in my life. I could have made things much easier on myself if I hadn’t gone to school over the summer, if I’d taken four classes instead of five. What was the big hurry to graduate, anyway? Well, Thomas and I were getting married, and we knew that one of us had to be out of college and working to support the other. Since I started a year before him, the pressure was on me: the sooner I finished, the sooner we could move on to the next stage of our life together. We planned a summer wedding, so he could continue to go to school without interrupting his spring or fall semesters.

Except that things didn’t turn out that way. Although I adored a few professors and enjoy some of my classes, I had no great love of college; it was an obstacle, something I had to conquer. But Thomas absolutely loathed it. College was something he could barely stomach, especially when a professor showed up and told his class to dress professionally – all while she was wearing sweats. I don’t know if that was the last straw, but it was certainly bad timing on that professor’s part. It was during that first week in the fall of 2003 that he met me after an evening class, and he just had that look. I took a deep breath, knowing what was coming. He had spent all evening thinking about what he was going to do and how in the world he was going to break it to me and his parents. I knew he was miserable in his classes, and I also knew that it in no way helped that it was my last semester, and he still had two years to go. I listened and tried to be sympathetic, encouraging. And then we moved on because talking through problems is what we do. And although we were creating a future together, he had to be at peace with his half of the deal. Fortunately, his chosen career wasn’t dependent on a four-year degree, and he did eventually (very eventually) graduate.

But there are couples out there who are sorely disappointed – even surprised – when they find out their relationships can’t survive on date nights and diamond rings alone. There are parents who think they can keep their kids busy with sports and camps and buy them cars, and those same kids will, in return, go to the colleges and pick the careers their parents prefer. And it’s not just parents and children. Everywhere you find relationships, you find people who expect things from others that are unrealistic, unfair even; you’ll find little respect for each other’s time and thoughts; you’ll find misunderstandings that could have been easily fixed. You’ll find broken communication. But when you see people really talking to each other – and listening – you witness a truly beautiful thing.

Sometimes our family has to drive somewhere in separate vehicles, and on those occasions, when Thomas can drive home and have Peter with him, I know he cherishes those rides. With the radio off and phones put away, they just talk. Peter asks questions, and Thomas answers. And Peter tells what he thinks about the world, and those are priceless (and often hilarious) moments. Thomas always seems to glow afterward, as if our five-year-old has just recharged him.

I watch parents who seem to care more about their phones or cars or any number of other distractions than their kids. Perhaps a big reason that young people have an increasing disrespect for their elders has a lot to do with the way we treat them, and often, I am convicted. I have to remember that I was once their age, too, yearning for answers, for information, for attention. And when I spend the time with my kids that they desire and deserve, I not only have hope for surviving the distant teenage years, but turning two men out into the world who will make it a better place.

I hope, if I have the chance to look back over my parenting experience some day in the distant future, I will see much improvement on my part and be proud of myself for hanging in there. And I hope that my kids will still want to talk to me then, to ask questions, to share their joys and concerns. But it won’t happen on its own; I have to work on it today – and always – to create that kind of a future.

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My Babies Slept with the Help of Babywise

There is a reason On Becoming Baby Wise: Giving Your Infant the Gift of Nighttime Sleep is my favorite gift to give new parents; it is the number one parenting book in my own collection. Authors Gary Ezzo and Dr. Robert Bucknam not only offer advice on how to get infants to sleep through the night, but they also cover a wide range of issues from how to raise multiples to what to do about colicky and reflux babies to fitting baby in with an older sibling or siblings to which baby products to buy and beyond.

I was very skeptical when a family member recommended Babywise, but she swore that it was the main reason all of her babies slept through the night by eight weeks. I had many other books in my maternity collection, but even the book that was specifically about breastfeeding didn’t give me nearly as helpful advice as Babywise did about the pros and cons of breast versus bottle, when to feed, and most importantly, why to feed (or not feed) at certain times.

Both of my sons had colic and reflux. Not only is there a chapter dedicated to these specific issues, but it also encourages parents like me to stay on the Babywise plan, with necessary modifications. Instead of giving up because my children had a few early problems, sticking with it helped them regulate and sleep through the night at seven and eight weeks, respectively.

So what is it that Babywise recommends? It’s called parent-directed feeding (PDF). Someone asked me, “Is it one of those books where it tells you not to feed your baby?” Absolutely not! Rather, it teaches parents how to recognize when the baby actually needs nourishment versus a diaper change or some other form of care. Just because the baby cries doesn’t mean he needs the breast or bottle, in other words. Many people of the attachment persuasion are opposed to this method, but think of it this way: You wouldn’t eat when you had a stomach ache or just needed to get some rest, so why would you put food in your baby’s upset tummy or try to pacify him by nursing when what he really needs is a nap?

Ezzo and Bucknam explore the history of parenting theories and explain the extremes of hyperscheduling (the baby must eat every X hours—no flexibility!) to no schedule at all. PDF is a happy medium, creating a predictable, flexible routine, which babies and children crave. They will be happy, well-rested, self-assured babies with equally well-rested and satisfied parents.