The Canary Sings

A few days ago, my daughter asked me, "Mama, why are you so mean lately?" I crouched down to look her in the eyes and asked what I'd been doing that felt mean.  "You don't play with us very much," she told me. 

You know the old saying about the canary in the coal mine?  That, I thought, was a canary singing if I ever heard one.  A canary breathing in too many toxic fumes of busyness and anxiety.

What's been happening?  Well, we're getting ready to travel to my mom's house for one thing, and road trips always throw me into a state of anxiety, even though I love them once I'm on the road.  I get very nervous about the disruption in our routine and distracted by all the preparations and last-minute things to take care of.  

I also think I've been feeling more doubtful than usual about our unschooly, playful approach to learning--probably in part because I often feel self-conscious about how the kids and I are learning when I'm around my mom, and I've started to anticipate that clutched-up, nervous feeling.  When the kids seem especially demanding and needy, I tend to get stuck in a rut of self-doubt.  If only I'd taken a more Waldorfy approach early on and encouraged them not to rely on me so much as a playmate! I agonize.  If only we took a more structured, scheduled approach, I wouldn't get so distracted by my own to-dos that I forget to spend intentional, thoughtful time with my kids!

As you can imagine, none of this mental hand-wringing does much good for my kids or me.

To stop feeling quite so distracted and consequently, "mean," as Cassidy put it, I decided to cut way back on my email and Internet use this last week so I could focus more on the kids and on the flow of our life.  Instead of running to the computer every time I thought of someone else I needed to contact or something I wanted to look up, I wrote down a reminder note, and then I sat down--just once, right after lunch, and did all the to-dos in one batch while the kids had their quiet time.  

It made an amazing difference.  Throughout the day, I did feel pulled, like an alcoholic thinking of a stash of booze, toward that computer.  But I tried to just notice the thought and move on.  

I also tried the same technique of noting things down on paper when I had a negative, critical thought about one or both of the kids or my own parenting.  Then, at the end of the day, I examined those thoughts using Byron Katie's "The Work" method of inquiry, asking if the thoughts were really true, looking at how I felt when I believed those thoughts, and so on.  Very helpful, and the kids were spared my unnecessary and unkind critical rants that way.

Yesterday we went in the back yard to read some books, and Bridger decided he wanted to build a cozy reading shelter within our wooden play structure.  He got some tape, fun noodles and a tablecloth to make a canopy underneath the roof of the play structure.  I contributed some rubber bands and bungee cords when the tape didn't hold.  We got underneath and it felt very sheltered and cozy.  But it was missing something. I went inside and got some soft sleeping bags, pillows, and some snacks and water.  

I spread the bags out and Bridger climbed in, snuggled down, and declared, "This is too nice to be true!  It must be a dream!"  And then we read in our little shelter and munched crackers and raisins.  We cuddled.  We lay down and felt the breeze and smelled the new pink blossoms on the trees.

My aim?  More afternoons like that.  Fewer afternoons so consumed by emails and to-dos that I forget what I really want my life to be about.