It's Memorial Day weekend and our schools are closed for a four day weekend to celebrate. This is noteworthy because it means that when I went grocery shopping this morning I did so with 2 children in tow. Therein lies the grist for my mill today.
Those with children know how coveted the shopping cart with the truck in the front is at the market. There are a limited number of these very special carts that have a truck built into the cart that the kids can ride in while parents shop. The ultimate success of a shopping excursion can usually be predicted from the outset by whether or not one is able to acquire one of these precious carts. Today we won the grocery store lottery. We found a truck cart that happened to have still intact straps which meant Eliana could join her brother in the truck. Things were looking good.
We made our way around the store, I managed to weed through the big pile of corn in the produce department to find 10 nice looking pieces of corn for only 18 cents a piece! I loaded up on BBQ necessities like hot dogs, buns, kraut and chicken. I remembered to get yogurt for the kids, I found some decent prepackaged snacks to keep in the car (I was able to read the labels!), and I even found Eliana a pretty Strawberry Shortcake toothbrush so that she'll stop using Alan's in the morning.
Despite the set of children's utensils Eliana commandeered on one of the aisles, and the random DVD that she picked up in her travels, it was a fairly low stress trip. As soon as we hit the checkout counter it all began to unravel. As I was struggling to unload the cart from the back, Ethan announced, in a weirdly proud kind of way, that Eliana had unbuckled herself from the straps that were holding her in the cart. At that moment I shot my eyes in her direction to find my daughter leaning out of the cart ready to land on her head on a cement floor. I was completely blocked from getting to her by a candy stand against which my cart was jammed. Ethan was attempting to hold her inside the cart, but she was furiously straining against him, trying to escape. At this moment I yelled at Ethan, "How could you unbuckle her?!" He answered that he hadn't done it, but I insisted that she couldn't have done it herself. I threatened to cancel his morning playdate with his best friend. I managed to push through the checkout lane, grab Eliana and proceeded to attempt to finish the transaction so I could get out of there with whatever shred of sanity my children and Shoprite would allow me to keep. As I struggled with my daughter in one hand and my wallet in the other, fighting against her wriggling, squirming and screaming little body, another woman with a baby walked by and said, "I'm right there with you!" It actually made me feel a little better. Then, as I was scolding Ethan again for having unbuckled his sister, I looked down and saw that, in fact, the straps were still buckled and that Eliana had actually wiggled out of them. I apologized to Ethan about 10 times, admitting I had made a terrible mistake by blaming him and contritely asked his forgiveness for my rush to judgment. At this point a customer service person came over and gave my son a lollipop (without asking my permission). I looked at the cashier and said I figured it was her way of showing sympathy for the fact that my son obviously has the worst mother in the world. She laughed, as did a woman checking out at the counter next to mine.
The sisterhood of women who have struggled through grocery shopping with children is a strong one in which there is little room for judgment. After all, one should never judge a person too harshly unless you have walked a mile in their shoes with their kids in a shopping cart through a non candy-free checkout aisle.
Friday, May 25, 2007
Monday, May 21, 2007
Everything I Need to Know About Being a Parent I Learned from Teaching My Son to Ride a Bike.
So, tonight after dinner was finished, my husband and two children and I set off for an evening walk so that our son could ride his bike as he had been wanting to do all evening. We did a lap around the block (about a mile) and then when we got home Ethan (my son) proudly announced that he wanted his training wheels removed so that he could learn to ride his 2 wheeler without them. He seemed pumped and honestly I was excited for him. I ran to get my wrench, and as I was turning the nuts to loosen them, my son shouted out, "Lefty Loosey, Righty Tighty!" An especially proud moment for me, as I hope to send my son off to his wife with more technical ability than that with which my husband came to me.
With the training wheels tucked away in the garage, we begin the process of learning to balance on the bike. The process is complicated by the presence of 3 neighborhood children circling my unsteady child on their own bikes. Ethan is so anxious to ride with the big kids, but at the same time he's scared. He rides a few yards and then inexplicably jumps off and lands on the driveway like Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon jumping from an exploding building. "I had to fall Mom!" he shouts out. My neighbor suggests having him ride on the grass so that when he falls he won't get hurt. We try that approach. It works for a while and then he says riding on the grass is too hard, he wants to get back onto the driveway.
Now it's actually getting late. The other kids need to go inside and get ready for bed. My son refuses to come in because now he wants to ride on the street. The evening surge of people returning from work and sports practices has settled down. Our block no longer resembles the Daytona Speedway so I figure, sure! Why not? I take him down to the street in front of our mailbox and steady him on the bike. I give him a good push to get him started and he pedals for a few seconds and then veers off onto the grass, jumps off his bike and screams, "YOU LET GO TOO FAST!!" Now he's crying. A sure sign that a five year old is too tired to be riding a bike. I apologize for letting go and we turn the bike around and I tell him I think we should go inside since he is obviously too tired to keep riding. He shouts at me through tears and anguish that he is NOT too tired and he wants to keep on riding since he has not really learned to ride on 2 wheels yet. I can assure you that what I just wrote was a generous translation of something that actually sounded something like, "noooooiwannakeegointillilearnitmaaaa!"
We press on. I steady him again and this time I give him a push but continue to hold on, as I had been chided for letting go too soon in the process just moments before. This time, he jumps off the bike and screams at me, "MOM!!! YOU DIDN'T LET GO FAST ENOUGH!!!" OK, so I am now a full time resident of that space between the rock and the hard place. Where can I go from here? By the way, it should be mentioned that my husband left us outside alone under the pretense that the baby was freaking out and he needed to get her inside. Wuss! If one of these kids was freaking out it was definitely the one on the bike!
I say to him once more, trying to sound empathetic and loving and supportive, "Honey, you are really too tired now, let's do this again tomorrow." The response I got was an even louder version of the tirade I tried to recreate above. What I understood more than anything from this overtired, frustrated, desperately pathetic display was that my son refused to quit without accomplishing what he set out to do. That, despite my fears of a neighbor calling DYFS to report me for abusing my son in the street, made me really proud. We settled on a compromise: he could ride the bike back up to the garage so that we could put it away. He seemed to agree to those terms. Of course when we got to the garage, he reneged on the deal and started lobbying for new terms. I told him he could ride in a circle on the driveway and then it was going to be time to shut it down for the night.
He made a couple of really good attempts, after each of them he would scream and cry at me about how something I had done had caused him to fail at his attempt. The overall result of this evening's trials and tribulations is that he effectively can ride his bike without training wheels, although he is in a world of trouble if he comes across an object like say, the tree he ran into, due to the fact that he has yet to perfect the turn. I am so happy for him that he accomplished this great feat, but also a little sad for him that he was so upset and churned up during the process.
Years from now, I wonder how I'll rate during his walks down memory lane. Will he remember me the way I remember my dad? Will he resent me the way I resented my dad for not being more concerned about the fact that I had ridden face first into a metal mailbox on an icy cold day? Will he think that I pulled him off that bike tonight sooner than I should have? Will I be judged as a caring and patient teacher, or as an impatient and strident teacher?
I re-learned tonight what I have been learning every day since my son was born. My children, both of them, have taught me about the person I hope to be and the person I want to show up for them as. When my son refuses to give up, even though it is painful for me to watch, I have to be proud of the determination he has to keep going in the face of what must seem insurmountable to his little 5 yr old body. And although, in those moments, it is hard to be his mom and to keep my own frustration at bay, the spirit he shows makes me certain he will do great things in his life. And that I will always be as proud of him as I am right now.
With the training wheels tucked away in the garage, we begin the process of learning to balance on the bike. The process is complicated by the presence of 3 neighborhood children circling my unsteady child on their own bikes. Ethan is so anxious to ride with the big kids, but at the same time he's scared. He rides a few yards and then inexplicably jumps off and lands on the driveway like Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon jumping from an exploding building. "I had to fall Mom!" he shouts out. My neighbor suggests having him ride on the grass so that when he falls he won't get hurt. We try that approach. It works for a while and then he says riding on the grass is too hard, he wants to get back onto the driveway.
Now it's actually getting late. The other kids need to go inside and get ready for bed. My son refuses to come in because now he wants to ride on the street. The evening surge of people returning from work and sports practices has settled down. Our block no longer resembles the Daytona Speedway so I figure, sure! Why not? I take him down to the street in front of our mailbox and steady him on the bike. I give him a good push to get him started and he pedals for a few seconds and then veers off onto the grass, jumps off his bike and screams, "YOU LET GO TOO FAST!!" Now he's crying. A sure sign that a five year old is too tired to be riding a bike. I apologize for letting go and we turn the bike around and I tell him I think we should go inside since he is obviously too tired to keep riding. He shouts at me through tears and anguish that he is NOT too tired and he wants to keep on riding since he has not really learned to ride on 2 wheels yet. I can assure you that what I just wrote was a generous translation of something that actually sounded something like, "noooooiwannakeegointillilearnitmaaaa!"
We press on. I steady him again and this time I give him a push but continue to hold on, as I had been chided for letting go too soon in the process just moments before. This time, he jumps off the bike and screams at me, "MOM!!! YOU DIDN'T LET GO FAST ENOUGH!!!" OK, so I am now a full time resident of that space between the rock and the hard place. Where can I go from here? By the way, it should be mentioned that my husband left us outside alone under the pretense that the baby was freaking out and he needed to get her inside. Wuss! If one of these kids was freaking out it was definitely the one on the bike!
I say to him once more, trying to sound empathetic and loving and supportive, "Honey, you are really too tired now, let's do this again tomorrow." The response I got was an even louder version of the tirade I tried to recreate above. What I understood more than anything from this overtired, frustrated, desperately pathetic display was that my son refused to quit without accomplishing what he set out to do. That, despite my fears of a neighbor calling DYFS to report me for abusing my son in the street, made me really proud. We settled on a compromise: he could ride the bike back up to the garage so that we could put it away. He seemed to agree to those terms. Of course when we got to the garage, he reneged on the deal and started lobbying for new terms. I told him he could ride in a circle on the driveway and then it was going to be time to shut it down for the night.
He made a couple of really good attempts, after each of them he would scream and cry at me about how something I had done had caused him to fail at his attempt. The overall result of this evening's trials and tribulations is that he effectively can ride his bike without training wheels, although he is in a world of trouble if he comes across an object like say, the tree he ran into, due to the fact that he has yet to perfect the turn. I am so happy for him that he accomplished this great feat, but also a little sad for him that he was so upset and churned up during the process.
Years from now, I wonder how I'll rate during his walks down memory lane. Will he remember me the way I remember my dad? Will he resent me the way I resented my dad for not being more concerned about the fact that I had ridden face first into a metal mailbox on an icy cold day? Will he think that I pulled him off that bike tonight sooner than I should have? Will I be judged as a caring and patient teacher, or as an impatient and strident teacher?
I re-learned tonight what I have been learning every day since my son was born. My children, both of them, have taught me about the person I hope to be and the person I want to show up for them as. When my son refuses to give up, even though it is painful for me to watch, I have to be proud of the determination he has to keep going in the face of what must seem insurmountable to his little 5 yr old body. And although, in those moments, it is hard to be his mom and to keep my own frustration at bay, the spirit he shows makes me certain he will do great things in his life. And that I will always be as proud of him as I am right now.
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