The Happiest Mom

…in a way that works for them. Being a playful mom doesn’t necessarily mean the “get down on the floor and play trucks” type of play. In this interview on the Raising Playful Tots show, I discuss my “play philosophy”, which can be boiled down to a few simple points:

• Give yourself permission to be the mom you are. We aren’t all great at the same things: some moms are naturally crafty, some are musical, some are nature-lovers, some make excellent audience members. Don’t feel “less than” because your strengths aren’t the same as another mom’s. In the interview I share how much I stink at imaginative play with my kids (and why I no longer impose myself in their imaginary world), and why I finally decided that certain organized activities just aren’t for us.
• At the same time, push yourself a little. You don’t have to have an art history background or a home full of only the finest imported German crayons in order for your kids to get a chance to create. I’m about as un-athletic as a person can get, so I sometimes have to force myself to go outside and kick a ball around with the kids…but when I do, I always have fun. (However, as I’ve shared here before, I draw the line at publicly shaking out my sillies.) It’s okay if you don’t actively engage in every activity your kids are into, as long as you still make those activities accessible to your kids. If making play-doh just isn’t your thing, maybe you can do that activity at a craftier friend’s house. Maybe your house is where all the kids play tag, instead.
• Make it easy on yourself. Cleaning up paint off the floor and scraping play-doh off the table isn’t necessarily fun, but it’s less heinous if you put the art supplies in an area where you can get to them easily and throw a mat on the floor under the chair for easier clean-up. An impromptu game of soccer is a lot easier to jump into if you keep a ball–with air in it–near your back door. Assume that these kind of activities will be a regular part of your life, and set up your home to make everything from preparation to clean-up as low-fuss as possible
• Being a playful mom doesn’t always have to mean finger-plays or egg-carton crafts. It’s a state of mind–an attitude of seeing the world around you with wonder, curiosity, and humor, and helping your kids do the same. For example, my two oldest sons and I often launch an impromptu, improvised Broadway-style musical number while doing the dishes, complete with dance breaks. We’re having fun, we’re relaxed, we’re creating…we’re playing!

I’d love to hear about your “play philosophy”.  And I know it’s been a long time since I posted…we just bought a house and I’m knee-deep in boxes and paint chips at the moment. I’ll get back to a more regular posting schedule as soon as the dust (literally and figuratively) has settled.

March 5th, 2010 | Category: Uncategorized, friendship | Comments (8)

Today, my essay on why I’m happy to be a young mom is at the NYT Motherlode blog. Thanks to Lisa Belkin for publishing it, and to all the readers who are chiming in with supportive and insightful comments.

From the essay:

Sometimes people will make a comment to me along these lines: “It’s amazing that you were able to have kids so young and do a good job of it. I could barely take care of myself at that age, let alone a baby!”

Well, yeah. Before having children, you couldn’t trust me with a goldfish. I suppose their scummy bowls could have served as some sort of proof of my unreadiness to mother. Yet as soon as I held my oldest son, Jacob, in my arms at the age of 20, I knew I would be a good mother.

The goldfish meant nothing to me. My children, everything.

Read the whole post here.

In light of my recent post about marriage, I’m sure a lot of readers are thinking along the same lines as Jane from Seagull Fountain, who asked me via Twitter whether I thought young age played a role in my husband’s and my troubles. It’s a fair question, and certainly one I’ve reflected on. While I won’t pretend that immaturity had nothing to do with the issues we had, I think we could have more gracefully “grown up together” if we lived in a culture that supported us more. Instead, I think we’ve become socially conditioned not to expect young adults to do a bang-up job at commitments, whether it’s parenthood or marriage or even choosing a major. It was almost as though we got a “pass”–heck, if the rest of the world didn’t seem to expect that we’d make it, who were we to argue?

Expectations are a powerful thing. Expect that a young couple or young parents will have a rough time because of their age, and they just might live up to that expectation.

That’s not to say I blame “society” for any trouble we had, just that while I do think age may have had something to do with it, I don’t believe it had to be that way. I do believe two relatively immature people can make a commitment to each other, hell, even to a baby, and work their way through it and come out the other side all the stronger and better for it. I also think immaturity is relative. You don’t stop growing until you’re in the grave.

I liked what The Leftoverist had to say in the comments on my divorce post:

One of my tips for a happy marriage is that we have to keep discovering each other–we have to let one another change. I’m not the same person I was 10 years ago, 5 years ago, and neither is he. I’d say we’ve had a few different marriages within our 15 years, if that makes sense. Because of that, we don’t feel trapped or bored. We still find one another incredibly interesting.

I really love this bit of advice. No matter how mature you are when you get married or become a mother, you will not be the exact same person 10 years later. We don’t suddenly grow up and find ourselves and then…stop. We’re always changing. Sometimes we change for the better. Sometimes we change a little for the worse then swing back toward better again. There’s no such thing as “arriving”.

Our spouses will change. Our children will change us. We will change the way we relate to our children. If there’s one thing I wish we could do as a culture, it would be to accept this kind of change as normal and not a symptom or sign of unreadiness for whatever next life step we want to take. Because, to paraphrase my essay, no matter how stable or secure you think you are, when you have a baby (or get married…or start a new career…or fill in the blank), your world will be rocked…whether you’re 25 or 45.

But why does that have to be a bad thing?

February 16th, 2010 | Category: Uncategorized | Comments (15)

I have a great marriage.

And I’m not delusional. I have seen good marriages, not-so-great marriages, and so-so marriages. I know mine’s good. I know because once, it was bad…really bad.

In fact, it was so bad at one point that my husband and I actually separated…and divorced. We had two little kids at the time. Though there was a lot of pain, hurt, and anger, we got back together a little over a year later, eventually remarried and everything has been great since. It’s hard to say, in retrospect, if the divorce was really necessary. But I learned a lot from it, and am determined never to let it get anywhere near that point again.

If your spouse is an addict, abuser, adulterer, or just all-around A-hole, you probably need to go see a therapist rather than (or in addition to) reading this post. But I think most of us are basically good people, partnered with basically good people, who misunderstand each other and make mistakes. Having young children adds a lot of stress and highlights those misunderstandings and mistakes.

In our case there were some complicating factors and plenty of blame to go around, but I see so many of the basics of my experience during that dark time mirrored by mothers around me, especially moms of young kids. So I’d like to share my own personal rules for keeping a marriage intact.

You’ll notice I don’t give advice about planning date nights. To me, that bit of wisdom has been thrown around so much it’s become trite. A date night is a great way to connect if everything’s going well, but if there are deeper issues, they can’t be resolved with a dinner out. And while sex is important, I’m too squeamish to publicly discuss my romantic life, so I’ll leave that topic to The Mominatrix.

What I’m talking about here is overhauling the way you look at yourself within a marriage, and the way you interact with your spouse. It’s not always comfortable, and sometimes it means letting go of your pride. But honey, it’s better than the alternative.

I’d rather be happy than right.

I know, I know, it’s a Dr. Phil-ism. But it’s the truth. For years I dug in my heels during arguments, sulked, pouted, and refused to yield because…well, because I was RIGHT, damnit, and why should I have to give in?

But 99% of the time, I am happier letting go. Even – perhaps especially – when I “shouldn’t have to”. Deciding to be the first person to drop an argument, apologize, or give in doesn’t make you a pushover. It just means you’ve made a choice to focus on the things in your relationship that bring you joy rather than frustration.

Forgive, but more importantly, forget.

“Forgiving” a transgression doesn’t really count if you continue to bring it up to use as ammo, or as an example of why “you always do X” or “he can’t be trusted to do y”. Even if you never vocalize the memory, if it’s still there taking up residence in the forefront of your mind, it’s going to poison every interaction you have with your spouse or partner.

Believe me when I say there are arguments my husband and I had in the midst of our roughest hours that I have completely set aside. They’re still in my memory, of course. But I look at them almost as though they happened to other people.

I’m not suggesting you be stupid about it if there are deep dark issues at hand (like, say, choosing to forget that your husband stole last year’s tax return to bet on the races). But run-of-the-mill hurtful conversations, mistakes, arguments? Forget. Forget. Forget. Once they’re over, they don’t do you any good to hold on to.

Only you can make yourself happy.

When my marriage and children were both young, I spent a lot of time waiting for my husband to figure out what it was I needed to make me happy and then give it to me.

Guess what didn’t happen?

My marriage saw a lot of sighing in those days. A lot of eye-rolling. A lot of violent fantasies.

“The kitchen sure needs a good cleaning,” I’d say, watching the hint clatter around on the floor and waiting for my husband to pick it up. Instead, he’d just step right over it. “Yeah, it does, huh?” he’d say as he settled down in front of the TV.

Eye roll. Heavy sigh.

“I’m so tired,” I’d complain, thinking he’d get the hint that I was up all night with the baby and maybe offer to take over so I could go to bed early.

“Me, too,” he’d say, yawning for effect. And I would picture myself wringing his neck.

“I never go anywhere or do anything,” I’d complain.

That was true. Yet I rarely made plans to do anything specific. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I wanted Jon to create a life for me, or make a grand gesture that said “I accept you having a life outside this home! You are free! Run!”

That also never happened, and I continued not doing anything or going anywhere for quite some time, rolling my eyes and sighing and wanting to wring his neck for much of it.

All these years later, I can see why my approach (or lack thereof) didn’t work, but at the time I simply felt like a victim. I thought he didn’t understand me, that he didn’t want to put me first or make me happy. The reality was, he didn’t know what I wanted because I never told him. And that’s because I, myself, didn’t know.

That was one of the good things about being divorced, actually. It forced me to stand up and be accountable for my own happiness. It forced me to figure out what I wanted, and figure out a way to make it happen for myself. But it was a high price to pay….and truth be told, I could have done it from within my marriage, if I’d just known where to start.

Now, I ask for what I want. If I need a nap, I hand him the baby and take a nap. If I want him to do a specific task, I very clearly state what I want. And if he doesn’t do it fast enough for my liking, I either do it myself (and shut up about it) or avoid the kitchen while I wait. Does he keep the house to the same standard that I would? No. But who ever said my standard is the one everyone else has to live up to?

I don’t allow myself to feel guilt (okay, not much guilt) for leaving my husband in charge while I head out for a night at the movies or dinner with the girls. And he’s one of the most competent dads I know. He gladly takes all five kids out to restaurants or the grocery store alone, he holds down the fort while I take weekend trips. He’s wandered the streets of NYC and Chicago with an infant and toddler while I attended writer’s conferences. Could I really expect all that of him if I’d never given him the opportunity to figure out how to do it himself?

Don’t get me wrong. There are a lot of times I feel like I’m pulling too much weight, or that my needs aren’t being heard. But now, we can have a reasonable, adult conversation about it. It’s not as emotional as it once was. It doesn’t feel like a personal insult if he never gets around to unloading the dishwasher. I won’t pretend it never annoys me, but I haven’t wanted to strangle him in a long, long time.

Don’t Go There.

To this day, when I watch movies or TV shows in which a character is considering getting a divorce, I have an intense emotional response. Stop, I want to say. You think it’ll be better, but you’re wrong. It’ll just be a different kind of awful.

No matter what, once you’ve had a child with somebody, they’re in your life—for better or worse—for years to come. Only divorces have a way of making psycho adversaries out of formerly reasonable people, and unless you and your husband are both very unusual people, it will get ugly. Plus, you’ll still be, well, you. You’ll still bring all your issues into future relationships. When possible, you may as well work on your issues from within your marriage…because you’ll have to face them at some point no matter what.

Of course, there are circumstances in which divorce is a reasonable choice. But too often, I think we allow ourselves to start thinking about divorce as a way “out” of a situation that’s become stressful or uncomfortable, but that will eventually change. The shuffling around of priorities, dreams, funds, and roles that inevitably goes along with learning to parent together can create a lot of friction in a marriage. But that doesn’t mean the friction will last forever. Divorce, however, usually does. So just don’t go there. Once you allow a thought like that to take root, it’s only too easy to start nurturing and feeding it rather than focusing your energy on the better outcome—an intact relationship.

I apologize for the length of this post. It’s a topic I feel very passionate about. As in life, as in motherhood, we are not victims of our relationships. We have choices to make every day about the way we interact with our spouses, the way we choose to either build up or undermine our own relationships. And having been on the other side of the fence, I know the grass is rarely greener. It’s so much better, for everyone, if you can find a way to tend the grass you’ve got.

What are your rules for happier marriage?

February 11th, 2010 | Tags: asking for help, love, marriage | Category: happiness, happy motherhood, home & hearth, mindfulness | Comments (34)

When my oldest kids were little, I felt a lot of pressure to cart them around to various activities, playgroups, and classes. Never mind that some of the classes made me want to run, hyperventilating, for the nearest exit. Never mind that I wasn’t particularly smitten with the other moms in the playgroup. Never mind that I couldn’t really afford all those classes. I saw filling our calendar with constant ‘enrichment’ as my duty as Mom, and never gave too much thought to what I might get out of the whole experience.

No more. Now I’m unabashedly selfish when it comes to choosing activities for my littlest ones. I wrote a guest post for Rookie Moms about my philosophy on activities for very young children. From the post:

“Small children are, for the most part, easy to please. Give them time and space to move their bodies and raise their voices, a play-based activity (organized or not), and another small person to interact with, and they’ll have a ball. They don’t have to engage with a mini-soulmate at every playdate or train with the most renowned musical instructors before they’re out of Pull-Ups.

Someday—sooner than you might think—your kid will be begging you for hockey equipment and karate lessons. You’ll be roped into PTA committees and booster clubs and find yourself working closely with people you might not have otherwise chosen to spend time with.

Until then, exercise your right to be a little selfish.”

Read the whole post over at Rookie Moms. But before you go, tell me: how much do you consider your own needs and wants when setting up your family calendar?

February 5th, 2010 | Category: Uncategorized | Comments (11)

I haven’t been updating as here as much as I’d like over the past week. Between my internet going down for a day, several potential contracts (business and personal) on the horizon, and an appearance on the Feminist Breeder radio show last night, life has been keeping me away from my blog (which, sometimes, is how it should be, eh?) But I wanted to direct my readers’ attention to a fantastic post by my good friend, Toni Klym McLellan, at her inspiring blog Bring The Family.

Drawing on the story of Conan O’Brien’s abrupt departure from the Tonight Show, Toni writes:

I remember during my first week in law school, a student raised his hand and told the professor that a legal judgment in a case we’d studied wasn’t fair. The first-year student’s protestations pooled like blood in the water as our prof waited, grinning and eager to feed. “Fair? Fair!? Who said life–let alone the law–are fair?” We all remembered not to comment on fairness for the duration, but of course, we also knew in some ways, the professor was right–we each deal with unfairness in our lives and in the world daily. I’m a bit more gentle when I tell my kids that sometimes, as Conan O’Brien learned, life is unfair (though a $45 million buyout should dampen his disappointment–I know it would mine). But what I stress is that while it’s important to notice and speak out when we witness an injustice, the ways in which we respond to unfairness makes all the difference in our lives. And I think Conan took the high road in many ways in this situation, and that’s a model I can get behind, both as a parent and a person.

Please read the post, but before you go, I’d love to hear from you: if you could sum up your philosophy of life — and motherhood — in a 4-6 word slogan, what would it be?

February 1st, 2010 | Category: Uncategorized, friendship | Comments (8)

In my post a couple of weeks ago about obstacles to happiness as a mom, I listed “being overwhelmed” as one of my top 5. While commenters chimed in with a whole list of other obstacles–things like lack of time for oneself, loss of control, and unrealistic expectations–I reflected about how all of those things can, for me, lead to feeling overwhelmed. So maybe being overwhelmed isn’t so much a single obstacle as it is the end result of many of the things that are part and parcel of a mom’s life: noise, mess, chaos, ever-changing routines, an incredible sense of responsibility, never enough time in the day…etc.

Since being overwhelmed has no one cause, it also has no one solution. Plus, the things that make me feel like I’m drowning in a deluge of overwhelm-ment may not be the same things that smother other mothers (woo, say that fast five times…). But I do think there are some things so universal to a mom’s experience of life that it can only help to deal with them proactively. I’m going to share a few of the things that I need to have to keep me from feeling overwhelmed:

I need order. One of my first posts on The Happiest Mom urged readers to make their beds or, if making the bed isn’t particularly important to them, to find the “triggers” in their home that make them feel disorderly and chaotic and make sure to address them…daily, or more often if necessary. From my post:

“We all have that one thing (or half a dozen things) that drives us crazy. Whether yours is crumbs on the counter or rooms where half the lightbulbs are burned out, taking care of your biggest crazy-makers (BEFORE they get to the point of making you crazy) sets the whole mood for the day.

For me, that one thing happens to be making my bed.

I’m far from being a neat freak, but I began to realize that I require a certain level of cleanliness in order to function. I spend most of my day in my home, and if it feels too messy or cluttered I just want to retreat and watch bad TV instead of being productive.

Similarly,  I am ruthless with clutter in my life. I just don’t have the space for it and it makes me feel unhappy and uneasy to see piles of stuff everywhere, so I straighten up those surfaces where things accumulate (for us it’s the dining-room table and buffet) often to keep on top of things. With five kids, some clutter is inevitable, but if I let it take over, I start feeling really overwhelmed.

I need a budget. I’ve written before about moms and financial security,  in a broad, caring-for-yourself-in-an-emergency or retirement-savings-and-investments sense. But our day to day financial security is just as important, and nothing is as overwhelming as feeling broke all the time. Creating and sticking to a budget is one thing that makes a big difference in how I perceive our financial stability, and when I don’t stick to one, I start to feel uneasy almost immediately. Sometimes it can be fun to feel like I’m splurging without having to ask my spreadsheet’s permission, but if I don’t get it back on track quickly, it can quickly spiral into that out-of-control feeling that is, well, overwhelming.

I need help. Even something as simple as figuring out what to do with my 4-year old and 10-month-old while picking my 6-year-old up from the bus stop can start to feel overwhelming when it’s the middle of a gray, cold January. I think sometimes it’s those little, daily things that can add up and lead to a big feeling of overwhelmed-ness unless we ask for help once in a while. What a vacation it feels like on those days when a friend comes over at noon so I can run out to the bus stop (or the grocery store…or just for a cup of tea) without bundling up the two little ones!

Writing this post, many other needs are popping into my head. I need friends (and I need to see them regularly). I need time alone. I need routine. I need goals. But right now, I need to finish this post so I can, um, bundle up the kids and go pick up my 6-year-old at the bus stop…so the rest of my needs will have to wait for later.

What are your biggest triggers for feeling overwhelmed, and how do you avoid it?

January 26th, 2010 | Category: Uncategorized, happiness | Comments (22)

I have always been a bit of a theater nut. I tried out for all the plays and musicals in high school, took acting classes in college and did quite a bit of community theater in my late teens and early 20s. When my two oldest boys were very little and I was home with them during the day, rehearsing and performing at night gave me a way to get out of the house, enjoy myself, and make friends.

But as the kids grew, the theater and I grew apart. I worked very busy hours outside the house for a while, and squeezing in an almost-every-evening activity wouldn’t have worked. After I started working much fewer hours from home, I considered auditioning for a play here and there, but something always got in the way: a new baby, a child’s activity, my husband working in another city, a book project. Time after time, when I’ve come close to dipping my toes back in the singing ‘n dancing waters, I’ve wound up stopping right at the edge, watching the waves lap at my feet, then turning around and walking away.

This was one of those weeks. There were auditions for a musical at the local college, and I thought about trying out. I did the preliminary research: yes, the rehearsal schedule was reasonable and very doable; no, there were no conflicting obligations, yes, my husband was on board, yes, I had help lined up in case he had something to do on an evening I had rehearsal. And yet, when the day of the auditions came and I thought about going, I felt tired instead of excited. It was as if a little voice was whispering to me: “This is not the time.”

Granted, I wasn’t that jazzed about the show to begin with—it’s not one I’m very familiar with, and I wasn’t particularly excited about any of the female roles. I wanted to do it on principle more than anything, just to do it, just to jump back into that world and reclaim a part of myself that’s been dormant so long.

But at some point, I just had to face the fact that this is not the time.

It would have been different if it had been a show I was dying to do. I didn’t skip the audition out of feelings of guilt or because I was worried about my kids, who would have been just fine spending 8 hours a week with Daddy instead of me and Daddy. But on re-examination, I realized that an activity that’s going to take up my precious free time right now, with the baby so little and the oldest needing help on his homework has got to be worth it, and this one wasn’t. Not worth the sacrifice. Not worth the time away from the kids, or the commitment.

This is not the time.

I’m not a patient person. It’s one of the hardest things for me about motherhood. I watch weeks, months, and years passing by and think about all the things I never did in my 20s, that I may also not do in my 30s. I sometimes feel panicky about the time that’s going by, all that is still undone. And since I have a “just do it” attitude about life in general, it’s hard for me to admit to myself that just because I COULD do something right now, doesn’t mean I HAVE to or should. It doesn’t even mean I necessarily want to.

Writing the Great American Novel? This is not the time. Oh, but what a great book I could write, if only I could seem to squeeze out the space to do it!

Traveling to Europe? This is not the time. But what if I never get there?

Even thinking about how young I am and how much time I have left isn’t always comforting. The older I get the more I know there is no possible way to do it all. Every path I take leads me away from a different path, and there may be no circling back.

That is a hard reality for a girl like me to face. I like to keep my options open. But opting for this—all these kids, this family life, time with my growing-so-fast baby girl—means I can’t have all of that. The thing I have to remember is that I wouldn’t even want that if it meant I couldn’t have this.

No stage lasts forever. I wait, and hope that my path circles back around to some of those things I’ve passed up, knowing that it’s likely I won’t ever circle back to some of it. But that’s life, I suppose.

This is not the time to be in a play. But that doesn’t mean I’m putting my dream on hold forever. Maybe I’ll feel differently this spring, or next fall.

In the meanwhile, what is this the time for? Something a little less exciting than my Broadway dreams, I think. I’m picturing evenings in front of the fire with a good book, dinners around the table and board games. The music, the costumes, the dance numbers, the makeup, the applause…they will come later.

This just isn’t the time.

January 22nd, 2010 | Category: Uncategorized | Comments (15)

Yesterday I read an article in the Washington Post called “The Test of Time” in which Brigid Schulte, a Post staffer and busy mom of two, tried to find out what’s happening to all her alleged “leisure time” (according to researcher John Robinson, about 30 hours a week). From the piece:

“I am like the Red Queen from “Alice in Wonderland,” forever running faster and getting nowhere. Entire hours evaporate while I’m doing stuff that needs to get done, but once I’m done, I can’t tell you what it was I did or why it seemed so important. At work, I arrange carpools to band practice and ballet. At home, I write e-mails, and do interviews and research for work. “Just a sec,” I hear my daughter mimicking me as she mothers her dolls. “Gimme a minute.” She just stuck a yellow sticky note on my forehead to tear me away from writing this story, at 9:35 p.m., to remind me I’m late to come read Harry Potter for story time. Most days, I feel so overwhelmed that I barely have time to breathe.”

Though Schulte claims, early in the piece, to have an overall happy life, that disclaimer is a bit hard to swallow when faced with passages like this and others sprinkled throughout the story. Can anyone really be happy when they can’t breathe? As I read on, I couldn’t shake the feeling that Schulte views herself as a victim of her own too-busy life.

To be fair, Schulte’s position, as a staffer for a major newspaper, is likely a lot more intense than my own career as a freelance writer. On the other hand, her two kids are school-age, and two of my five are home with me all day. So while I can’t perfectly understand her life and the stresses she faces, I can definitely relate to the feeling of trying to meet a deadline while kids need me in the background (ask how many interruptions I have dealt with while writing this post!), staying up too late, getting up too early, never doing anything quite as well as I would like. Yes, sometimes I feel overwhelmed.

But if I had to be perfectly honest with you I think I probably average more than 30 hours a week in leisure. I know that doesn’t jive with our cultural obsession with busy-ness, but I rather enjoy being not all that busy and am not ashamed to admit it. Of course, I don’t expect to just wait around for the Leisure Fairy to come by, tap her wand and grant me my 30 hours. Like so many other things in life, I’ve learned that when I want leisure time, I have to demand it.

Much of what Schulte wrote in her piece does ring true for me. I do often feel the pull of my kids’ needs while I’m engaged in a leisure activity, whether it be reading a magazine or watching TV. I am often mentally multi-tasking, thinking of something other than what I’m engaged in and have to bring my focus back to the present again and again, like a meditation practice. Every time I go to the movies I experience at least one “fade out” during a boring or repetitious part, where I find myself obsessing – almost before I know what’s happening – about whether or not I need to go grocery shopping today or if it can wait until tomorrow; whether I remembered to switch the laundry over to the dryer or not. But again, focusing on the present takes practice. And just because I don’t always do it perfectly doesn’t mean that leisure time didn’t “count” or wasn’t worth having. I still enjoy it, even if it’s imperfect. And when I’m too geared up or distracted to enjoy it, it means something in my life needs to shift.

I wonder if this obsession with time – not having enough, trying to find more – just exacerbates this “over-busy” feeling. It’s like when you have insomnia, and can’t stop looking at the clock. The clock reminds you how much sleep you’ve missed and how little you’ll get even if you fall asleep RIGHT NOW. As you hyper-focus on the time, it becomes even harder to fall asleep. Similarly, often I get distracted from whatever it is I’m doing. To allow myself to get further distracted by worrying about my distraction would be just sort of…ridiculously distracting, not to mention counterproductive. Who can ever enjoy herself if she’s always worried about her enjoyment being interrupted?

Yes, it may be a bit hard to swallow the fact that Robinson, an unmarried, childless man seems to be telling moms with spouses and young, needy children and demanding jobs to stop and smell the roses. But let’s not shoot the messenger (or resort to physical violence: on NYT blogger Lisa Belkin’s analysis of the piece, commenter “Ross” wrote: “If I ever meet that Robinson dude I’m going to spend my 30 hours of leisure time as a stay-at-home mom punching him dead in the face.” Yikes!)

This is life: we’re living it right now, and we don’t get a do-over. But neither is it set in stone – it’s a series of small choices we make and priorities we pursue, and we always have the power to shift it in a new direction. It’s OK to ignore the kids for a while and flop down on the sofa with a magazine. It’s OK to hire help. It’s OK to ask more of your spouse or partner. It’s OK to say no to an expensive and time-consuming after-school activity, or to teach your kids to be more self-sufficient so you can do less. It’s also OK to just say, my life is crazy-busy right now and there’s not much I can do about it, so I’m going to find enjoyment where I can…even if I’m not getting my full 30 hours of approved leisure time this week. We can also move toward seeing our kids as more than a job, more than an obligation, and think of them as a big part of our leisure time. I know that’s not easy in today’s high-pressure, high-stakes parenting culture, but I think it’s healthier all around.

I like what my friend Amanda Witman, mom of four, has to say on the topic. “I think the bottom line is, if someone feels they don’t have enough of (fill in the blank…leisure or whatever else) it is their personal challenge to figure out how to shift priorities or choose to gracefully accept the status quo until a shift can be contemplated.”

This new world of parenting means we’re all dealing with shifting responsibilities and different pressures–both economic and social–than previous generations did. But we do have options about the way we live our lives, and we can embrace the good while dealing constructively with the not-so-good. We don’t have to buy into a model of productivity that doesn’t work for us. We can pave our own paths. And my path? Happens to be the leisurely kind.

How much leisure time do you think you get in a week? How do you define leisure? And does it matter to you how much you get—or just how much you enjoy it?

January 20th, 2010 | Category: Uncategorized, friendship, happy motherhood, home & hearth, mindfulness, motherhood | Comments (23)

Today my good friend, writer, and very sane mom Denise Schipani let me know that she caught the tail end of a segment on the Brian Lehrer show which quoted my Babble.com essay about not paying for kids’ college. The show’s theme was parental sacrifice, and I found the examples given as well as the calls from parents (and the comments following the clip on the website) interesting. What are they willing to sacrifice for their kids? What are they not willing to sacrifice?

I find that the discussion surrounding these topics often takes a turn toward the extreme. With commenters saying things like “I really cannot think of anything I would not sacrifice for my child” and “People who are complaining that they sacrifice their body and their careers…these people CHOSE to have children” (that was pretty much a direct quote from my essay) and “Raising children is a huge undertaking…if you can’t afford it, or don’t want to lose what precious time you have for yourself outside of the 40 hour work week, then one should think twice about having kids” and even “after having heard on the BBC this morning, that children in Haiti are sleeping next to decaying bodies, perhaps this is a time to reflect on how grateful we are for our children, and not venting our gripes and frustrations?”

There is a difference between being unwilling to sacrifice anything for your kids, and being unwilling to sacrifice everything for your kids. The fact that there are children in horrible conditions in Haiti only serves to put into crystal-clear perspective that my kids instead worry about things like whether I got them the brand of cereal they want or whether they might have to take out student loans or go to community college for a year or two–in other words, by world standards they are incredibly lucky, and yet as an American parents we’re still expected to do more, more, more. Admitting that you sacrifice a lot for your kids isn’t whining, griping, or venting. It’s a simple statement. And being unwilling to sacrifice certain things doesn’t make you a bad parent…in fact, it may make you a better one.

There is nothing I would not sacrifice for my children…if it meant a difference between life and death. But it’s not my job to make my kids happy, and it’s not my job to create as easy as possible a path for them. It’s my job to give them the tools to make their own happiness, and to create their own paths. Sometimes that means I sacrifice for them, and sometimes it means I don’t. I am - gasp - a person too, and as much as I know my kids didn’t ask to be born, I also know I give them as good a life as I can, and put them first…most of the time. So on the relatively rare occasions that I give somebody else’s needs priority, I really don’t feel too bad about it.

I’m not suggesting parents should never sacrifice for their kids. I do it every minute of every day, in big and small ways, and that’s not a complaint - just a fact. But I think we have to choose our sacrifices wisely. If we sacrifice everything we are, everything we hope for and want, then who are we? I’m more than my childrens’ caretaker and the family maid. I also owe it to them and the world to be a wife, sister, friend, daughter, niece, colleague, neighbor, and citizen. But I can’t do that if my cup has emptied totally into theirs.

What about you? What will- and won’t-you sacrifice for your kids?

January 14th, 2010 | Category: Uncategorized, happiness | Comments (8)