Black Girl in Maine

Musings of a black woman living in the nation's whitest state

Tag Archives: raising kids

Quality time versus quantity of time…a parenting dilemma

Quality of time versus quantity of time, it’s a dilemma I face with regards to my kids more specifically the 6 year old, even though it’s been known to rear its head even with the 20 year old. As a mother who happens to hold another job aside from the mom role outside of the house, I always feel like I am on the tightrope with regards to quality and quantity of time lately as I have become more active in taking time for me outside of my worker bee and mom roles, that tightrope has gotten even tighter.

The past few weeks have been hectic professionally as I start ramping up for program changes and have entered my least favorite time of year…grant writing and begging. As a result I know my attention has been scattered at home and a few days ago decided to take a few mental health days where I decided to not work and just be present with my family. A funny thing happened though, here I was all prepared to hang out with my daughter and frankly she just wasn’t feeling me. I spent two days being present, picking her up from school one day to have a tea party at a local bakery, something she had requested. Of course it was during the heat wave, so the bakery really wasn’t comfortable and the kid didn’t want tea.

I figured I would try again the next day and made the decision to switch some plans around so that Friday we could engage in a little baking time as we prepared for the Spousal Unit’s birthday and then followed up with something she had asked me about…make our own pizza night. A slightly better response but still not quite the mom-kid bond fest I had hoped for but the weekend got better, granted it happened when I was less mentally present and you know what? That’s okay.

Last night before I unplugged for the evening, I came across a twitter conversation about raising kids and the balancing act and saw a discussion on quality of time versus quantity of time. I think this is something many parents grapple with especially in the SAHM versus WOHM path. Yet as a parent who has an older (adult) child, I found myself wondering how many of us give our kids what they need? Or frankly even what they want?  In the past, I have always tried to have high quality time, yet both of my kids to varying degrees frankly are more interested in quantity of time. I have tried to ignore that fact, but for us it’s our truth. The 6 year old is far more happy on days when I am home when she comes home from school and even if we are not directly engaging, she just likes knowing I am here should she want to engage with me. Same thing for college boy, when he is home, we often will do things, but our best connections always seem to happen late at night generally when I am heading to bed and we end up talking for hours.

I personally prefer quality time, for me when I am in a place where I am fully present and engaging with my kids, and maybe it’s because deep down I know quality of time feels better to me when I am short on actual time. Yet in 20 years of parenting, I am becoming more and more convinced that just as we raise our kids, our kids raise us and gently shape our parenting path based off what they need and want.

In the end it matters not what we choose, it matters most that we meet our kid’s needs, as for me, I am thankful I have a job that allows me flexibility to give the quantity of time when it’s most needed.

Mommying and the older child….how do you do it?

Mom blogs are almost a dime a dozen and that is not necessarily a bad thing. Yet for all things child related that get written about, the one area where I wish more moms would speak of is how mothering changes as your child becomes a teenager and then a young adult.

A few days ago, I was out talking with someone I had just met and we were talking about our kids and I mentioned having a 6 year old and a 20 year old. As usual, I was greeted with the “Wow, you have a grown child!” This happens often, after all most people who are middle class and above, at 39 rarely have grown kids. Granted this is a relatively new phenomenon as women delay having kids but in reality it wasn’t that long ago that having a 19 or 20 year old kid at my age was a norm. In some areas especially within lower socio-economic groups, having a child before 21 is not abnormal. It’s one of many ways that I am reminded of my status as a class straddler, after all I was born working class and while I am not technically still there, in many ways it’s what I know.

Funny thing is people who have younger kids often assume that by the time a kid is in college, the active work of parenting is over. Yet my own experience as I walk this path is that nothing could be further from the truth. Instead it’s a place of great transition and one that frankly at times I wish more people would talk about.

Last night I had a text exchange with the college boy that reminded me that we both are trying to find our place. My son is 20 but he is also a full time live on campus college student stuck in the wilds of Northern Wisconsin. He devotes his energy to his studies and his music. Since going to college he has learned to live on his own, but the reality is that me, The Spousal Unit and the former Spousal Unit financially provide for his day to day living. As I joke college kid is still on my payroll. Yet what does that mean?

I know that in the almost two years since the boy went to college that both me and the former Spousal Unit have tried to learn new ways of being with regard to allowing college kid the freedom to make his own decisions. I rarely offer edicts, in fact I am pretty sure I don’t but if I feel strongly about something, I will state that I strongly suggest that he consider my point of view. When college boy’s car became a death trap, the former Spousal Unit didn’t tell college kid to stop driving but also strongly suggested that he give up the car since it was beyond repair…again the college kid chose to heed the advice but what happens when a time comes when he decides not to heed the advice?

I must admit this is all new territory for me, at 20 I was getting out of an ill-fated marriage, struggling with being a single mom and trying to keep my head above water. My son often comments that my life at 20 in no way resembles his life at 20. It’s true. My own parents didn’t feel that I needed to be parented at 20 yet in many ways I did still need parenting but it didn’t happen. I think too many times we think that adulthood is this magical thing that happens when we hit a certain age when in fact it’s a process. When the babies are little we know what we need to do, we have a good idea of how to meet their needs but when the calendar says they are an adult, that’s when the process becomes murky. How much space do we give them?

Last night my son responded to a message I had sent him saying “Don’t worry about me, your plate is full” I know he meant well but the truth is as a mother my worrying and fretting  didn’t stop at a certain point, he may not be as labor intensive as my 6 year old but believe me I still worry. I worry when I know he is in a funk, hell I worry when he is not yet I sometimes don’t know when to Mom and when to let go.

The parent child relationship is far more than the early years and it’s an area where frankly I would love to hear more voices from those in the trenches.

 

 

Adulthood is the goal

I often find myself thinking that in today’s world of hands on, feel good, kids first parenting that there is one key item that many of us are forgetting as parents. The goal is to raise healthy well-adjusted kids who become healthy well-adjusted adults. No matter how it feels at times, kids do grow up. I know firsthand when you are in the thick of the daily parenting grind and just keeping your head above water, it’s easy to think that today’s cute baby, toddler or preschooler is eons away from adulthood. The grown up years seem so far away, yet as a parent with one adult child, I know that childhood goes by a lot faster than you realize. The reality is you don’t realize how fast it goes until they start driving the family car, graduate from high school or go away to college. Then you find yourself realizing you have a few more strands of grey hair, wondering when they hell did they get there and more importantly who the hell is that adult in your kitchen at 2am? Oh, it’s the baby! Only if you are like me the baby stands a good foot taller than you, has a deep voice and isn’t really a baby anymore but as I tell my son, he will always be my baby!

Yet in today’s parenting world where many of us are trying not to repeat the harsh parenting techniques of our parents and grandparents, it’s pretty easy to get a child to adulthood without that child having any practical life skills. Since my son came home for the summer he has shared stories of his fellow classmates and dorm mates which are frankly disturbing. Kids who don’t know how to wash their own laundry who will let a dorm room start smelling like a stale locker room rather than do their own laundry. Kids who for the first time are handling their own money and freaked out because no longer can they engage in retail therapy as their parents are finally instituting limits and the kids are not only freaked out but in some cases down right depressed.

I might have chalked my son’s tales up to random occurrence’s until I stumbled across this piece in the New York Times and started thinking this is a problem. The other night I was tweeting about my son’s cooking, and had a few responses from folks surprised he could cook. Why? My son has been cooking since he was 8 or 9…at 10 he made me a wonderful meal of Cornish Game Hen and rice. Hell, last summer he shared his killer fried rice recipe with both my husband and I and it’s now a staple in our household. Just the other night he decided to make himself some General Tso’s using tofu which judging from the smell it came out pretty damn good and he made it without benefit of a recipe which is a useful skill.

The reality is there are way too many kids turning into adults who lack the ability to cook, clean, shop and balance a checkbook. We as parents just assume at some point they will learn these skills but how are they going to learn them if we don’t teach them? I am a big fan of bringing kids in the kitchen with me, even if all they are doing is watching; believe me they pick up things. A while back I shared some pictures I took of my almost six year old cleaning and a few buddies of mine were surprised…why? I grew up in a family where Saturday morning was cleaning day and even as a small kid there was always something I could do. When my girl was 4, I would give her a bucket of vinegar and water and a sponge so she could assist in wiping things. Too many times we focus on the fun stuff; carting kids here and there which is great but real world skills are even better and can be made into a no cost fun time.

Just last week my son flew to North Carolina and his return flight was delayed yet he was able to get a new flight into a different airport, by the time I knew of this situation he was already in Boston getting ready to board the train to Maine. A few years ago I would have been the one calling and rescheduling things but as a seasoned traveler and more importantly a young man he told me recently he feels this stuff is his responsibility. I admit it feels bittersweet but at the same time I am proud of him. I find he is asking for my help less often and while there is a part of me screaming Nooooo! I know it’s time to let go and let him stand on his own. He has friends who are lovely young men but who can’t navigate travel at 19 without the assistance of their parents. This is not good.
No one is saying we must turn kids into mini adults but at the same time we do our kids a grave disservice when at 18 or so they are launched into the world without a clue how to do the daily activities of life.

All we need is love…or not?

Let me just start off by saying that I know there are some readers who might be offended by what I am about to say…its ok. There are times when to be honest I just don’t feel like being all that nice or politically correct; times when I am just going to shoot straight from the hip. This is one of those times.

I recently was in a discussion where someone told me that when it came to having kids, all you need is love. That to even factor money and whether one can even financially afford to raise a kid never even came into consideration for this person. They also thought it was sad that so many folks (folks like me) let money be a barrier to having more kids.

I must admit I have been stewing on this for several days and just need to bring this to the blog. I will fully own the fact that how I view the decision to have a  child is based on the my experiences growing up with parents who most of the time didn’t have two nickels to rub together. It was also further clarified by my choice to have my first child at 19 where I got my own first hand look at how rough life is raising kids when you are worried about essential items like oh say a roof over your heads or food on the table.

Those two major experiences have everything to do with why my kids are almost 14 years apart in age. After elder boy was born and my first marriage crashed and  burned, I was determined to make sure if I ever had another kid I wanted to make sure I not only had me together but that I had the means to support any more children. Regular readers have heard how when elder boy was little I worked not one, not two, but at times as many as three jobs to provide for us. There was one point where I was doing jobs, school and trying to raise him…it was hard but the alternative was existing off the meager sum that was given away for welfare back before welfare reform in the early 1990′s. Not fun times.

Professionally aside from a few brief years in the for- profit and corporate sector I have worked with families and individuals in need for most of my career in both Maine and Chicago. Let me tell you poverty looks the same whether it’s in the big city or a rural state. Poor people whether they or Black, White, Latino or whomever share the same traits and the truth is it’s not pretty.  Its not pretty living in government housing, granted in Maine it looks bit better than in Chicago but folks still know its subsidized housing. Trying to get your kids basic needs met and not knowing if you can do it allows you to see that all Mamas love and care for their kids and you see the same humanity in that inner city woman that you do in that rural white woman.

Poverty sucks and yes in the ideal world, we would live in a country that is more child and family friendly but we don’t and until change happens the best we can do is if we are of sound mind is to try to make sure that should we bring a kid in the world that we can provide for them.

Daily, I see kids who live with poverty, kids with teeth rotting, kids with ill fitting clothes, many times not wearing warm clothing on a cold winter day. I am sure not all these parents are neglectful, hell I know some of the parents, many times the reason the kids are out there dressed wrong with not enough food in their bellies is because it’s the best the parents can do. I know families that get food stamps or whatever the new name is for them, yet it’s not enough and the last week of the month these families have to hit the food pantry, where you get whatever they have. Sorry, Tommy no milk for you, no fresh fruits and veggies either, since the pantry didn’t have any.

See love does not feed a child, nor does it clothe a child. Love can not provide the enrichment activities that might nurture that child to be the next great. Sadly its cold hard cash, dollars, duckets, deniro, shekels that provide these things. So while it would be lovely to have kids with no regards to your financial situation, is it really fair to the kids?

I know its taken a lot for my brother and I to move past the animosity we had for the way we were raised and compared to much of what I see on a daily basis, we had it easy. At any time my mother could have stopped playing poor with my Dad and gotten help from her comfortably middle class family. Instead my Dad thought it was character building to raise us the way we were raised.

As I tell the Spousal Unit, one of my fantasies is that of having a large family. Hell when I was pregnant with girl child I dreamed of having at least 2 or 3 more. Ha ha ha, we are now done. Between the girl child’s demanding but lovable personality and faced with the fact that in less than a year my son will be a freshman in college and the costs associated with that, I know I don’t have the resources to have more kids. Hell, I am trying to see if my resources even allow for goldfish as a pet!

So for me while love is free, my reality is that kids are not, they do cost and while what they give can never be measured in dollars and cents, the fact is to not look at the costs associated is plain foolish. After all babies can be cheap but just feeding a teenaged boy can send you to the poor house even making everything from scratch but that’s another post.

Home on the brain

It’s no secret to those close to me that this year for the first time in years, I have gotten terribly home sick. I haven’t been back home to Chicago since my Mom’s untimely death 5 years ago. Part of the reason has been money but the truth is after my Mom’s passing, I didn’t feel like I had a home to go back to. After all my Dad lives in an efficiency apartment, so no place to lay my head should I visit. My brother lives in a bachelor pad and with my Granny passing a mere 6 weeks after girl child was born, for the longest I felt there was simply no home to go back to.

Maybe it’s my daughter getting older and asking about our extended family or the fact that elder boy has been in Chicago lately checking out colleges, but the past few months, Chicago has been on my mind and in my spirit. I am reminded that while I make my home in Maine, deep down I am a city girl. I find myself missing my favorite diners, missing rides on the el during rush hour and just being able to get some real Mexican food without having to travel from hell and back to find it.

At the same time I think of all the pleasant parts that I miss about Chicago, I am reminded of why we eventually came to Maine. It did start because of my ex-husband but truth was I was very nervous raising my son in Chicago. My parents left a decent area in the early 1990′s because gangs were checking my brother out and he wasn’t even a pre-teen. I admit I was scared of what my son could get into by merely just walking around and the fact is living in a good neighborhood in Chicago is no guarantee that trouble won’t find your kid. Yesterday in my old neighborhood, the very one the Spousal Unit and I were living in before we moved to Maine, a 14 yo boy was brutally beaten and left on the street where had it not been for a passerby the child could have died.

I watched the video that accompanied the story in the link I provided and was struck by the fact that Chicago’s top cop mentions that kids are in need of conflict resolution skills, I agree they would help but as a parent I can’t help thinking a large part of what we are seeing happen in Chicago is that kids need parents. I know times are rough and folks are working hard to put food on the table and a roof over their kids heads. I know this all too well because I spent 6 years as a single parent who at one point worked not one, not two but three jobs. I know when you are working like this its hard to parent but you know what? Too many parents feel guilt over not being present with their kids and ply them with the latest gadget or the hottest pairs of sneakers and its got to stop.

I used to be conflicted about the fact my parents chose for my Mom to be a stay at home parent despite the fact that it meant we spent most of my childhood living pretty close to the financial edge. Yet the older I get, I see the greatest gift they gave me was the gift of being present, being there when I came home from school to hear me and be a part of my life. Look, I know in some families a stay at home parent is a luxury but there are ways to be present in our kids lives, it just requires some creativity and even more a committment to our kids.

I think the epidemic of child violence we are seeing back in my hometown is directly related to the fact that for many kids there are no parents or loved ones playing an active role in a kids life. Instead kids are left to fend for themselves and receive a diet full of unhealthy images pumped directly into the home via the idiot box. How else can we explain why kids so young would be filled with so much rage.

Conflict resolution classes are nice and most certainly helpful but what we need are parents and adults who can take a positive role in the lives of kids. In some cases just an adult who cares is more than enough to make a difference; I see it daily in my line of work. The center I run is located in a low income ,high density area where dysfunction is the norm yet our center provides a safe harbor for kids. We need more such places in communities throughout this country. What we are seeing in Chicago may be garnering national attention but kids mistreating each other daily happens all across this country even in a small rural state like Maine.

So while I am saddened by the violence back home, I won’t let it deter me from going home soon. After all there is a deep dish pizza and a night at one of the best spots for jazz in the country calling my name!

Yeah, he is too old

I remember when my son whom I generally call elder child was a young boy, I got him potty trained at 2.75. No, that is not an exaggeration, remember though he is almost 18 so back then kids got potty trained earlier than they do know. There was also the fact that I landed a stable job and had to put him in a daycare that required he be potty trained, so my Granny and I got him trained in a week with some help from others.

So despite being potty trained before 3, of course elder child went with me to the restroom when he was a wee lad. That was until he turned about 4 and my father, mentioned that he was getting rather big to be coming with me to the ladies room, so I started letting him go into the men’s room by himself. I stayed right next to the door, made him yell out when he got to his stall. I admit it was nerve wracking but at that point I was a single Mama and I leaned on my own parents for guidance. Obviously, the boy survived going to the bathroom alone at age 4 which is good since at age 5.5 he flew alone for the first time to his Dad’s…

The reason I shared this little tale is because somehow in this world of hyper parenting, I have run across Mamas who still are taking 8, 9, and 10 year old boys to the ladies room with them. They do this because they don’t feel comfortable with their sons in a public restroom, they are concerned about predators, pedophiles, and other undesirables that may be hiding in the men’s room.

I gotta be honest and say this is some crazy shit….look, unless a 9 year old boy has special needs he should be able to go to the bathroom, take a piss and get the fuck out. I realize we want to keep out babies childlike and innocent for as long as possible but look we are raising kids. That means we must allow them the chance to grow up. A 9 year old still having to pee in the ladies room is only 7 years away from getting a drivers license and 9 years away from being considered a legal adult. I don’t know but when I look at it that way it makes me think maybe one should start the small stuff first, like letting the kid pee on his own.

Look, the world is a scary place. The first time my kid flew alone was on a court order that if I disobeyed, my ass was going to jail. I was scared shit-less imagining all the scenarios of what could go wrong and you know what? Nothing went wrong. One time we had a flight he was on that had to land someplace else other than the airport I was waiting for him at and as nerve racking as it was he was fine, the flight attendants watched him, fed him and no one harmed him. He was about 7-8 when that happened and merely looked at it as an adventure.

Yes, we want to hold our kids tight but when we hold on too tight that can create problems. By all means be cautious but lets not be crazy. In days not that long ago, an 8-9 year old kid could walk to school alone a mere 6-7 blocks….I know because that kid was me and guess what aside from the occasional stray dog I had to avoid, I turned out fine. Then again I was riding Chicago city buses alone by 10 and that to was fine.

Have a happy Friday!

The Return of the housewife, the 2008 model

The past 4 years I have spent a lot of time online, in part getting pregnant with mini-me and having no Mom to lean on and being out of practice with the baby thing, I immediately took to researching all I could about having a baby. (you’d have thought I had never done it before, granted having a baby in your 30′s is a whole lot different than having one at 19)

During the course of my pregnancy I researched the merits of vaccines and whether or not we should get them, diapers, cloth versus disposable and a whole array of things. Now I will say that this second go around on the mommy ride I did make some different changes, used a midwife rather than OB, actually used cloth diapers though I will admit it was only because I found an environmentally friendly diaper service (sorry but cleaning shit nearly made me stop eating when I tried). Turned out having a baby these days is definitely different this second time around.

However one of the more interesting things I have stumbled on both online and in my day to day life was what looks like the return of homemaking, new millennium style. The past couple of years I have met more and more women, primarily white women but some of the sistas are there too, who take the task of being home with the kids seriously. I’m not just talking cleaning and cooking. I am talking making everything from scratch, I have met and know women personally who don’t just clean but they even make the cleaning materials, soap and shit from scratch. Then there are the hardcore Mamas who plan on homeschooling or are already homeschooling… now I will be honest I find the idea of homeschooling attractive yet I suspect that my introverted aka give me space personality coupled with mini-me’s very extroverted personality might not make us candidates for homeschooling. Though right now I am doing some initial learning about it since my real basis for seriously considering homeschooling is that I am concerned how mini me will do in a predominantly white school. However school is a couple years off for now.

No, today’s housewife looks nothing like the Mama I grew up with, my Mom cooked, even cooked from scratch but it wasn’t her passion or bliss. She even sewed like many of today’s Mama’s but it was a hobby, she didn’t make all our clothes from scratch. Me, I can’t sew to save my life, lets just say I didn’t get the handiwork gene at all, sadly a sista barely can sew a button on a shirt. I tried to learn to knit a few years ago but gave up after spending gobs of money on materials.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not bashing these women, shit, part of me is in awe since while anyone who knows me will tell you I am a good cook, as my Pops would say I cam throw down in the kitchen and the spousal unit’s slowly expanding waist line could be a testament to my cooking. However I don’t love to cook, its just that living in Maine especially in a small town, its often easier to cook than go out to eat since there are whole categories of food I love but you won’t find in any local restaurants around these parts (hello, Mexican food).

Seriously though while I would never call myself a feminist, though my leanings are more womanist, I do wonder about the long term feasibility of being a housewife. Don’t get me wrong, I love my husband and I trust him but having been divorced and knowing that spouses can check out of life early, I have a strong desire to keep a foot in the work world. There is also the fact that I like working to some degree, not enough to show up every day at 8 am, but enough for the work I do. Plus the pesky fact that I owe a tad over a hundred grand for that pair of degrees I earned and I need to keep Sallie Mae at bay with some monthly cash and my payments are just high enough that expecting the spousal unit to cover them plus our house/family expenses might border on being a tad unfair.

Seems the 1950′s housewife was not really happy and I do wonder if this new millennium model is also happy. I also wonder about the inherent unfairness that keeps many Black women from embracing this model, then I wonder do we as Black women even want to embrace this model of womanhood?

Personally while I find some segments of modern homemaking exciting, I am not sure it feels like a step in the right direction for me, what about you? Do you want to tend the kids all day and being completely in charge of the house but doing everything yourself? If so what is the role of your partner in this? Is he/she reduced to being a paycheck or do they play an active part in this lifestyle as well. I ask because I also know women who are living like this but pissed that their partners are not respecting them.

Ok, Monday morning ramble over, time to drink more coffee and get to work.