Bedtime Chats and Mental Health

"Can we talk?"

Max asks this frequently at bedtime, after I've tucked him in and started for the door. My kids have always become pensive, philosophical, and talkative in the minutes before going to sleep. It's mostly sincere, but also a delay tactic. I'm no dummy.

Last night we talked about the four presidents on Mount Rushmore, the Civil War, racism, and the system of checks and balances in our government. You know, regular nine-year-old stuff. Speaking of, try explaining racism to a kid sometime. It's embarrassing to explain such a concept to an innocent child. It makes no sense to kids because it makes no sense, period.

Mornings are the opposite of bedtime with Max. He is sluggish and slow. Nearly every morning for weeks, he has asked if there's a possibility of a snow delay. Or a chance he might be able to stay home. Please, oh please? I'm nice, but not sympathetic. When he says he doesn't want to go to school, I tell him that part of life is doing things we don't necessarily want to do but should. Welcome to growing up.

Monday, however, I had a change of heart. I spent a couple minutes prodding him out of bed, and then stopped. I told him that he gets one day a school year to stay home and he could choose today if he wanted. But (and it's a big but) that meant no more complaining on future mornings. He thought about it for a few minutes, considering the pros and cons, and finally decided that, yes, today he would cash in. I met him in the kitchen later when he began explaining that it was good that he stayed home because he had a bit of a stuffy nose and sore throat and maybe a cough too.

"No, no, no," I said, "we're not going to pretend that you're sick and need to stay home. Sometimes you just need a day off. We all do. It's called a Mental Health Day."

He was a little skeptical, but seemed to understand.

He spent his Mental Health Day eating crepes for breakfast, lounging around with the iPad, reading a little, lunching at McDonald's and learning how to play solitaire. Not too different from an adult day off, actually. Tuesday morning he got out of bed without question. Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday too. My plan worked.

Although, this week Max has referenced his Mental Health Day a few times, as in, "I wrote those valentines for you guys on my Mental Health Day." Or, "I think I watched that show on my Mental Health Day." Is he talking about Mental Health Day a lot? At school? With his friends? 

Hey, did you hear about Max? He had a "Mental Health Day." I heard he was on the verge of a breakdown.

I hope this doesn't come back to bite me in the butt. Perhaps one of our bedtime chats will be about how people misunderstand mental health.

I wish I had written this...

Found here.

This one time...

I looked in the backseat of the car and Max had been swallowed by his t-shirt.

But he made the most of it by turning it into a reading nook.

Are you children safe from their t-shirts?

Blast from the Past

Last night at dinner I decided to do a dramatic reading from my junior high journal. I can't remember what prompted it, but I left the table and retrieved it from my desk drawer. It's been in there for the past few months, ever since I found it while going through a box of stuff in the basement. I started reading, thinking it would be kind of funny, but it fell a little flat.

I don't remember being an overly dramatic child, but most pages were sprayed with my melodrama. There was a lot of hatred directed toward my mom, which I feel terrible about. There was a lot of complaint about having to clean my room, which was always a disaster. There was an over-arching theme of my plight as the put-upon middle child, the one who nobody understood and yet expected to be perfect.

"Where are the happy parts?" Christian asked.

That's the problem. I didn't write those down. Oops.

I got out the journal in hopes of connecting with Christian, as evidence that I actually was his age once and might have a clue about the thoughts running through his head. And after reading through a few entries together, he and I certainly gained a new understanding of one another. I understand now that he's not nearly as difficult and moody as I'd been thinking, and he now understands that I'm completely nuts.

Taking Up Arms

Max does this thing with me that is sweet-slash-horrifying. He clutches my upper arm and squishes the flesh, kneading it like dough, while he exclaims, "Squishy! Squishy!" I find it sweet because it's this little corner of my body that he has discovered and claimed as his own. It makes sense as I think about it. He's spent a lot of time with my upper arms; they cradled him as a baby, hoisted him around as a toddler, and shouldered snugly next to him as a reading buddy or fellow watcher of the Disney channel. It's the soft, warm security blanket he never had, I guess. The horrifying part, of course, is that few women (and probably men, too) enjoy having someone describe them as "squishy." With exclamation points.

Usually I ask him to stop. I try to be comfortable in my own skin, but it only takes about four squishy-s until I am sufficiently uncomfortable. And sometimes he seems genuinely hurt. He can't understand why I don't want my squishy arms celebrated! Frequently! In public!

Semi-related tangent: I remember this young couple from our church congregation when I was younger. The husband was whispy thin and his wife, while not fat per se, was quite thick, outweighing him by at least a few industrial bags of flour. Somewhere along the line I remember hearing that he was attracted to her soft, jiggly, fleshy arms because they reminded him of his mother. Aaaaaaaaaack! That kind of disturbing detail just doesn't leave you.

Okay, back to my story.

Beyond the regular, run-of-the-mill body image issues, I think the discomfort comes from somebody loving something about me that I find un-lovable, something I would like to change. Why isn't he obsessed with my sense of humor? My cooking? My blog?

I started doing pushups to de-squish my arms. They've always been bigger than I'd like, but once upon a time they were toned and muscular, so I decided to go retro with some exercise. I made the mistake of doing my pushups once while we were all watching TV together. Max cried out, "Noooo! Don't get rid of Squishy!"

Oh my gosh. Squishy isn't just an adjective, it's a proper noun. Kill me now.

We talked about it and struck a deal. I would keep Squishy as long as Max provided back scratches whenever I asked. (Let's break this down: I stay fat and get unlimited back scratches. Winning!) To his credit, I've received a few on-demand back scratches; however, I'm still doing pushups in the privacy of my own room (with no noticeable results). So we're both happy, I guess. Though I think the real exercise is finding a way to receive this very specific love. I'm not even sure where to begin. Every time I dip my toe into that pool, I can't help but think that someday Max will marry some wonderfully fleshy woman because it will remind him of me. Aaaaaaaaaack! And then I run away do more secret pushups.

What about you? Has somebody loved something about you that you dislike? How did you overcome?

It's Probably Time to Talk About the Alien

"Confidence is fleeting," Ryan said to me one day. He was quoting Joe Montana or Joe Namath or somebody who never had any business being un-confident.

It hit me like a football to the back of the head. Confidence is fleeting, I thought. I used to have some, but where has it gone? It's a haunting feeling, knowing it was there one minute and gone the next, like that favorite pair of sunglasses that grew legs and walked away unannounced. Apparently I had been storing my confidence supply in the claw-footed bathtub of my psyche. The one with an apparent leak. 'Cause it's gone, baby, gone.

The timing is wretched. First, I lost (most of) my job. But then (and more upsetting, it seems) my son's voice dropped an octave and he started giving off strange vibes. My vibe-reading told me that he suddenly had no interest in carrying on a conversation with me and that my opinion on anything and everything was completely irrelevant. Pesky, even. There were stronger vibes, ones that invited me to cease from interacting with his friends, teachers, coaches, and any other acquaintances that met him first. He would, I surmised, admit our relationship to others strictly on a need-to-know basis.

It's not just me, either (which helps my confidence a smidge). Ryan took him to school one morning after a dentist appointment. He walked in the building with our son, only to find himself suddenly several paces behind. He started to say something to him in the crowded hallway and was met with a quick "We don't know each other" glance, followed by a bionic stride to distance the two of them by at least two zip codes. Guilt by disassociation.

"It was the strangest thing," Ryan said to me afterward. He confronted Christian about it later that same night, who plead innocent.

"What was that all about?" Ryan asked him. "I work with kids your age all the time. I'm young and cool. Why would you be embarrassed of me?"

I hated to break it to him, but stating that you're young and cool sort of immediately invalidates the claim. Christian whatevered us both with a shrug and went downstairs in the basement to obliterate rival villains/sports teams/spy networks with his Playstation controller.

"I feel like he's lost to me," I said. The words tumbled out of my mouth before I'd even had time to think about them. But that's how it feels a lot of the time. Sure, there are moments of lucidity, when his pre-teen self bobs to the surface to mingle with us---he might laugh at one of our jokes or voluntarily remain in the same room---but they are bittersweet moments that never last for long. Sooner or later, a text comes through on his cell phone, and he dives back down into the deep blue new world of his adolescence.

I find that every time I talk to him, I'm telling him what to do, what to straighten, what to pick up, what to tuck in, what to comb, what to read, and what to take his feet off of. It's like an involuntary act, a form of Parenting Turrets Syndrome, which has so much less to do with his need for regulation and so much more to do with my need to remind myself that I'm his mom.

I had confidence before Christian was born, right up until the moment they put him in my arms to send us home from the hospital together. Any confidence I gained after that point was hard earned, but eventually it came. I got comfortable in our routines, and for a long while I sort of knew what I was doing. I should know by now that those feelings of self-assurance (particularly in the realm of parenting) are the quiet before the scream, the calm before the storm, the smooth side of Life's sandpaper.

My friend once said that her children were taken over at age 12 by alien life forms, only to be returned mostly unscathed at age 20. She came to accept it, expect it, and eventually laugh about it. It seemed like a sweet anecdote to me at the time. You know, when my kid was six and liked to snuggle before bedtime. (Waaaaaaaaaaa!)

This afternoon I ran an errand, heading to a place I hadn't been before. I plugged the address into the GPS in my car and put the car in drive. I pulled out of my driveway, and was flooded with memories of using that GPS every time I stepped outside my door when we first moved here. I practically needed it to find the mailbox. Back then I couldn't imagine the day would ever arrive that I would drive out on my own, knowing exactly where I was going and precisely how to get there. I honestly don't remember when I stopped needing it every day; it's been quite a while now. I guess it's just the way things go. The unimaginable slowly becomes the norm. The days we think will never come arrive without announcement.

I'm going to remind myself that it's a good thing.

Dear Mom: The Morning Routine

I'm going to multi-task here. In an effort to both keep up with blogging and tell my mom everything she's going to need to know while I'm gone, I'm going to write her some letters here on the ol' blogaroo. And in the event that she gets lost here while trying to find the mailbox and can't fulfill her duties, all the information will be written out and one of you dear readers can fill in for her.

Dear Mom,

The first thing you should know is that there is something wrong with Christian. Like, seriously messed up. For reasons that can't be explained, the kid gets up every morning around 6:00, sometimes earlier, without the aid of any encouragement on my part. Sometimes he uses an alarm clock, sometimes he lets his circadian rhythm naturally launch him out of his bed and into the shower. After he showers, he gets ready, makes his bed, picks up his bathroom and bedroom, and then heads downstairs to spend some time on homework or catching up on ESPN or mastering another level on one of his video games. I'd like to say that I've influenced this bizarre, responsible behavior, but I think you probably still have vivid memories of my morning lethargy, not to mention the hazardous conditions of my bedroom.

You'll make him feel most at home if you, as I do, stumble out of bed around 6:50 or 7:00, wander downstairs with eyes half-closed, wish him good morning, and ask him if he'd like anything for breakfast. Most of the time he declines, but I make him a couple of pieces of toast (with peanut butter and honey) anyway and then spend the next ten minutes begging him to eat them. He heads out to catch the bus at 7:15, lugging his overstuffed backpack. Feel free to eat the rest of his uneaten toast.

I refer to the hour of 6:50 to 7:50 as the Honeymoon phase of the morning. It goes so swimmingly, so effortlessly, you might be lulled into thinking that cartoon bluebirds are going to swoop in and begin dressing you in handmade (wingmade?) clothes from the tablecloth.

This will not happen.

Max usually has to be nudged/threatened awake, sometime around 7:40. He'll want his fuzzy red robe to put on and you'll have to resist giggling at the way he looks like a little old man in it. You can ask him what he wants for breakfast, but I don't recommend it. He'll take a full 20 minutes to contemplate it, and you just don't have that kind of time. He likes toast or yogurt or a Toad in the Road.

Max should be dressed and fed and freshly tooth-brushed by about 8:15, give or take a few minutes. He needs his homework in his backpack, as well as a snack of the toasted goldfish cracker variety. You'll want to grab a jacket and head out the door with him to join our friendly neighbors at the bus stop/mailbox for a wonderful morning chat before the bus comes to pick the kids up.

At this point, you can walk down a couple of doors to Estelle's house to join her for a morning walk on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We used to walk every morning, but Estelle has recently ditched me on Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays in favor or a senior citizens water aerobics class at the local gym. I'm not sure what that means on a personal level that someone would choose pool time with the seriously bathing-suit-challenged over a brisk walk with moi, but I plan to ponder it on my lengthy flight.

Back at the house, it's just you and the dog. You should make sure that she has food (one scoop per day) and water. Do not give in to the urge to feed her whatever the kids didn't eat for breakfast, no matter how forlornly she looks at you, wincing, and trying to pretend like she has a hard life. Her life consists of napping, snuggling, eating, more napping, and low-impact resting. We should all be so lucky. That's why we get to eat peanut butter and bacon and she doesn't. There has to be some balance in the world, for crying out loud.

Feel free to indulge yourself in reading or TV, but avoid the fourth hour of the Today Show at all costs. Kathie Lee is...scary. You can dabble in dish-doing if the mood strikes, but if I were you, I'd probably sprawl out on the couch and ponder life with a bag of potato chips.

This takes care of the morning. Any questions?

Fun with Max and Mom

Max wasn't very happy about the to-do list I gave him this morning. It included reading two chapters of a book, and then writing a short story. He protested immediately, and I tried to explain that he needs to keep up on his reading and writing during the summer or else his brain will turn into mush and start oozing out of his ears. And if that happens, I explained lovingly, he will die.

Reading + Writing = Not Dying

I sat down to read with him, but he quickly became annoyed when I offered help. I tried to give him a few sound hints, and he huffed and puffed and let me know that I was "blowing it." Fifteen minutes later, we parted ways on page 8.

Next, he stomped around to find a piece of paper and pen. He scribbled in the middle and wrote, "Hi. Good-by!" and submitted it to me with a frown.

"Try again," I said. "You could write a story about old ladies." (Max uses old ladies as the punch line to almost all of his jokes and stories.) He rolled his eyes and walked away.

A while later, he tossed another story at me with a scowl:

old ladys atkt the world

the polies cild them.

The end.

Two can play this game. "I love it, Max," I said. "This is really funny."

"YOU THINK THAT'S FUNNY?" He screamed, "POLICE KILLING OLD LADIES?!"

Then he stomped in the other room and ironically slumped into the Time Out chair.

You know, one of the most important things we can do as mothers is make summer miserable for our children. My work today is done.

Proud Parenting

Yesterday I met with Max's teacher for parent-teacher conference. One of the highlights of the visit was going through some of his papers. One assignment was to write a "How To" paper. The other kids in the class wrote "How To Make a Peanut Butter Sandwich" or "How To Ride a Bike" or "How to Make Your Bed."

Max's paper?

How To Take People Down
First you hug them. 
Senc you shak a lot. 
Third you lean left or right. 
Forth then thair down.

I didn't know what to say, and for a moment I was lost in my thoughts. I couldn't believe it. I mean, you teach and teach and teach your kids, but you never really expect that they'll listen. And then they go and surprise you this way. I was beaming with pride.

To the parents of the world, I say, the kids are listening. They can be taught!

Video Games: Your Opinion, Please

I have a question for you parents out there, and I really hope you'll share your honest opinion on the matter because I am sincerely interested in what you have to say.

The topic today is video games. In my highly scientific observations of other parents (peeking in windows and tapping phone conversations), I've found that there is a wide range of standards when it comes to the matter of what is and what is not okay for their youngsters to be playing. Now, I have my own ideas on the subject (and maybe I'll share them later), but I'm curious about yours. I'd love it if you would share your opinion on the following questions:

1. Do you monitor which video games your child plays?
2a. If you do, what is your protocol for allowing or denying a certain video game?
2b. If you take a more relaxed, permissive approach, please explain why.

IMPORTANT NOTE: I am not interested at all in your opinion of other parents and their practices; I want to know how YOU personally make decisions on the matter for your own household. (I reserve the right to delete comments if there's any mud-slinging!)

Oh, and one more thing--anonymous comments ARE allowed, so don't hesitate to offer up your opinion, even if it seems unpopular!