How to Parent a 6-Year-Old Boy

I'm just kidding. I have no idea. I'm just doing the best I can with the resources I have available to me. I borrow from other parents, from MY parents, teachers, coworkers - whoever I can!

This is an interesting age of independence. I used to keep Isaac at arm's reach, then I broadened his horizons by gating off the living room and letting him crawl, pull up and eventually walk, around. We always had an eye on him, though. I remember what a big deal it was when we could let him play in his room by himself. Every stage of development gave us, as parents, a little more freedom, as well.

Now that he is six and is obeying the rules (stay close to the house, don't go inside anyone's house, don't talk to anyone you don't know, don't go into the street, etc.) we can let Isaac go outside and play without one of us being outside with him. This is major. Yesterday, Isaac played outside for FIVE hours. From after breakfast until 4:00pm, he was outside...PLAYING. No video games, no movies, no sitting on his tush. PLAYING. He would come home every 10 or 15 minutes and check in or one of us would check on him. He plays with the little boy next door on one side - Austin, and the little girl on the other side - Trinity. If we weren't out there, Austin's dad or Trinity's dad (or uncle, or grandma) were out there. We could always see them and/or hear them, but it is so weird that he can just run out the front door and go PLAY - "alone."

Our weekends were once consumed with family stuff: errands, activities for Isaac, keeping him entertained and busy and now he can entertain himself. They play Ironman and Spiderman, they ride scooters and bikes and skin knees and get bug bites; they pretend and role play. They are socializing and negotiating and learning a lot of important life skills while they are outside, getting sweaty and grubby and being kids.

What did I do? Hm. Some laundry, some reading, some meal prep, I spent way too much time on Facebook playing Frontierville, watched Ghana beat the US and I NAPPED. Oh yes, the joy of a weekend afternoon nap! But I'm obviously going to need to find a hobby. My kid doesn't need ME to play with him anymore. It is bittersweet, as a lot of stages of parenting are, but it is so amazing when he asks me if he can go outside and play.

YES! YES! Go outside! Ha.

Except, this morning, he scared me to death by showing up at my bedside at the crack of dawn and staring at me. He has not done that in ages. I am a light sleeper and hard to sneak up on. He was dressed and asked me if he could go outside and play. It was probably no later than 7am. I told him that Austin and Trinity were probably still sleeping and he should go play in his room or watch TV.

That's ANOTHER thing. The TV. We have it "child locked" so no programing rated PG-13 or higher gets through without the code. It probably won't take him long to figure that out. But there are still things on there I'd rather him not watch. Yet, there he sits, sometimes, with the remote in hand, in charge of the TV. Weird. Pretty soon he'll be able to call a grandparent or a friend on my cell phone by himself, too. OH! And he can get to his few favorite websites on the laptop with no trouble at all.

There is a lot of anxiety in this parenting thing. As relaxed as I am getting, I'm always on guard, as well, at least internally. On Friday, we went down to the splash pad at the park down the street. We had the place to ourselves for a while, then an older kid walked down with a really cool remote control car. I didn't want Isaac to bother the kid, so I kept calling him back to me, but the draw of that car was too much for him. The kid was awesome, though and let Isaac try driving the car. Pretty soon, they were playing together. I talked with the kid some, found out his name and that he was 13. 13. And willing to play with a 6-year-old? When I told Pat about it, he was OK (and he's a professional). He explained that he was a lot like that at 13, because he was the youngest and never had a younger sibling to play with, guide, take care of, etc.

The boys played in the water and in the sand, they swang and jumped and drove the car around. Everything the kid did, Isaac tried to do, as well. I never saw anything that raised any red flags, but I could NOT relax. It was wearing me out. They climbed the chain link fence around the tennis court and the kid gave Isaac a boost. I watched him like a hawk. Where was he touching him? Was it appropriate? It is a sick, sad world that we live in that I had to do that. They ran around the other side of the tennis courts and wrestled on the ground like puppies. At one point, Isaac was laying on top of the kid and I called them back over closer where I could watch them. Other than that, everything was cool. But I didn't FEEL cool about it.

I really felt for this kid, living with his Grandpa for the summer while his dad is in South Dakota. He said when his dad gets back, they are moving to Springfield. He had t-shirt on from a small town near Springfield and I asked him about it. He said it was the "last school he went to." That seemed sad. No mention of a grandma or a mom or brothers or sisters. He said that he just "walks around and stuff" while his grandpa is at work. He had a cell phone and his grandpa called in to check on him while we were there. He had my sympathy, but not my trust.

Isaac has been outside playing most of the day today, as well, since we got back from church. I had him come inside and clean his room and rest for a little while and then he was ready to go back outside again. He came charging in the door a little while ago, excitedly rambling that Trinity's dad was going to take them all down to the splash pad. This was not OK with us. We don't know Trinity's dad that well. He said Austin's dad was going too. Again, I don't want him going that far away without one of us being with him and he has been at the splash pad this weekend twice already, it would be OK if he missed this time.

Of course, it was not OK with him. "But AUSTIN and TRINITY get to go!!!" It was one of our first opportunities to use the "well if they jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?" approach, or my favorite, "I'm not Austin or Trinity's parent, I'm YOUR parent and I say NO." Pat was talking to him and he mouthed off to him and went out the door. Oooh...yeah...that got ugly. Life's not fair little man.

But I still remember that horrible feeling of missing out on something fun because my parents were "MEAN" and said no. Now that I'm a parent, I know that they had reasons for saying no. Good reasons. They weren't just being mean. We want our kids to be happy, but at what cost? To the point where they become ungrateful little monsters who are in charge of US instead of the other way around? No thanks.

So, he's moping around acting like his world has come to an end and he doesn't have a friend in the world.

He'll get over it. Well all did.

Untitled

I have had this dream once before, but it was a little different.

We were about to adopt, again. We were expecting another boy, yet when we were standing in line at this big placement ceremony, each set of parents was handed a slip of paper with their new child's name on it and our paper said "Mary."

I burst into tears and gave Pat a giant hug. We were getting a girl! We would have a a boy and a girl, just like I always wanted. I couldn't wait to meet Mary - we had immediately decided to NOT change her name, we were just struggling with finding a middle name. I think we ended up naming her Mary Frances Elizabeth, or some variation of that, after all of our grandmothers ("M" for Maxine, my grandma - I wouldn't peg Maxine on a baby - even in a dream!).

Mary was a beautiful little girl, 6-12 months old. She had dark hair and big brown eyes. I noticed that all of the other families around us had babies and toddlers with special needs - Downs Syndrome, etc. and I realized the placement ceremony WAS for parents adopting children with special needs. There was a program and I started to look through it, wondering what Mary's special needs were. In the program, I found some babies names were marked with a picture of an angel and quickly realized these were babies who were not expected to live. I panicked and started flipping through the pages, looking for Mary's name, hoping not to find an angel. I did not.

Mary's information said that she had cri du chat syndrome. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cri_du_chat I was upset, but thought that this was something we could deal with. We took Mary home.

At this point in the dream, Mary was no longer a girl, she was a blonde little boy who could turn into a cat. I was trying to convince him to stay a little boy and not turn into a cat any more. He was a good, obedient child, just very mature for his age. We lived in an apartment, a multi-story building, and I remember looking out at the building across and all of the windows and it seemed that many of them had tattered quilts and blankets hung over them, instead of curtains. The blankets were fluttering in the wind and I wondered what they looked like on the other side.

Mary was older then, and "catboy" was gone. I took her in the car to go talk to a bill collector. I was just a matter of a few cents off on a payment and they were yelling at me.

She had the money all laid out on the counter and Mary, who was now a toddler, impressed her by counting the money. I told them that we would have the full payment at the end of the week and asked them for patience. They did not have patience. I told them that they could wait. I pointed out that I had waited four years for this beautiful child and had needed that money for her adoption and they could just wait for their money. That caused the lady to have compassion. She agreed to wait for payday. When I loaded Mary back into her car seat, I praised her for being such a smart girl and counting the money.

I realized that the car felt sort of empty. Where was Isaac? I remembered that we had to give him up in order to adopt Mary. He had been a sort of "placeholder child" until our REAL adoption went through. When I realized that, I was devastated. I kept having memories of him and trying to shut them out, telling myself to not think about him and focus on Mary. But the memories were too much. I eventually went to email our social worker and find out where Isaac had gone and try to get him back. I hated myself for letting him go so easily.

In the end, we were attempting to complete three adoptions: Mary's, the other little boy's and Isaac's. I didn't know how we were going to pull it off, but no matter what I did, I was going to have my family.

This is the second time I have dreamt of letting Isaac go. The first time was 2-3 years ago. Some of Isaac's birth family came for him and I let them have him. After a day or two, I regretted the decision and hated myself, grieving and mourning over the loss of my little boy.

Maybe the loss of a child is a common dream for parents, as we are all losing our children a little bit each day as they grow up and need us less and pull away from us more - long before we are ready.

The Kindness of Strangers

I had this very long, involved dream last night - the kind that makes one feel like they've been watching a movie. I wish I understood why it has stuck with me all day. I know some of the people in the dream and some I only wish I knew. Part of me kind of misses them today, now that I'm awake and they are gone.

I was running away in my dream. I had an excuse - I was writing two stories and I needed to do research. I needed to travel, so off I went, with very little information given to anyone, so a friend and her father followed me. They were familiar with the part of the country I was visiting and had family I could stay with. I was drawn in by their concern, their genuine sense of worry after my well-being and I stopped running and stayed with them.

Our first accommodations were very humble and there wasn't much privacy, but as the dream went on, they improved. We found more family who welcomed us. We went shopping for snacks that could only be found in that part of the country. We read the local newspapers and I did, indeed, research my story.

In part of the dream, my dream friends and I were able to glimpse into the future and see a couple who were now young and not even dating and see that they ended up very happily married with grandchildren, celebrating a 50th or even 60th wedding anniversary and one of their adult sons sang a song that he wrote especially for the occassion.

I had such a happy, content feeling that this couple should end up together, while looking in their eyes and knowing they had yet to even fall in love.

It was such a nice dream, but really full of people I barely know or don't even know at all. Why is it of any consequence? Why does it stay with me?

I was thinking about this today when I remembered a dream I had a little over two months ago and how I was so confused by it and what I thought it meant ended up not being what it meant at all. I didn't know one of the key players in that dream, either, at least not any deeper than on the surface, so much so that I didn't even recognize them in the dream and now they are very much a part of my life. My whole life changed in the 24-48 hours following that dream and everything is different now.

I hope this profound sense that this dream means SOMETHING just like that one did goes away. I'm happy. I don't want things to change so drastically again.

Airport Musings

We picked my dad up at the airport tonight when he returned from his buddy trip with his best friend, Gary Jones. I used to love airports, probably because I never have had to spend much time in them. I loved to people-watch at the arrivals gates, when lovedones could wait down at the gate, pre-9/11... I would see little kids waiting for grandparents and grandparents waiting for little kids; men holding bouquets of flowers, waiting for their wives or girlfriends; good friends who would sometimes laugh, cry and hug all at the same time when their buddies walked out of that gate.

It is different now, sure. I stayed with the car while Pat and Isaac went inside to wait at baggage claim, but even in the line of parked cars, emotions were evident in those who waited with me. In the car in front of me were a daddy, a little boy and the family dog. The little boy, who was probably 7 or 8, kept getting out of the car and running up to the doors to look in. At last, he got out one final time and sprinted for the door. He returned with his mom on his arm, looking much relieved to have her back on the ground with him.

I watched a lady in jeans and flip flops walk very slowly across the traffic lanes and off to the parking lot. I supposed she had just left the one she loved and was going home alone. I watched a man in his 60's loading the trunk of a taxi with a suitcase while balancing the freshly-lit cigarette on his bottom lip - feeding his habit not a few feet away from the airport doors. I saw an elegant-looking lady with bleached hair lean against her large suitcase and make a call on her cell phone. A white luxury SUV pulled up next to me and she walked over. A man opened the back hatch, without speaking a word to her (nor her to him) as he lifted the suitcase into the car. She went around to the passenger side and got in. They never spoke. They never embraced. They scarcely even looked at each other.

Perhaps I have it all wrong. Maybe they weren't married. He could have been her brother, or just a friend, maybe even an employee. Regardless, it was sad. I hope someone is always to welcome me home. I hope I am also worthy of that welcome.