If how we talk to our children shapes their inner voice, I want my words to be kinder.

I believe that how we talk to our children becomes their inner voice.

And? Lately I've realized that I'm shaping my oldest daughters to have critical and sometimes harsh inner voices.

But? I refuse to accept the lie that says "this is just how I am." I know I can do better for all of us. But lest this all sound legalistic, let me be clear: my motivation isn't to be perfect or flawless. I know myself too well to aim for that nonsense. I just want to show more grace. That's the goal here. 

So I got myself some bracelets. I was going to use Silly Bands, but I had these jelly bracelets from Oriental Trading handy.

(Because, ahem, I ordered them for Jocelyn's and Patience's 7th birthday parties and tucked them away and promptly forgot all about them. Yes, the girls are 8.5 now. Don't judge.)

I'll probably still order some Silly Bands, since these have a strong plastic smell and are hard to put on because they're child sized while my hand isn't. I don't want to wait until they come in, though. I feel a sense of urgency to change how I talk to my girls. So these will do for now.

Here's the plan: The bracelets will start on my right hand each day. With every affirming statement to one of our big girls, I'll move one over to my left hand. With every critical statement to them, I'll move one back to my right wrist. If I'm tempted to say something critical but I don't have any bands on my left hand or only have a few, I'm planning to let it slide as long as there's no immediate safety risk. This will require me to have stored up affirmation before anything critical passes my lips.

Over time, I might tweak the system. While I'm ultimately aiming for the good to substantially outweigh the critiques, I think evening them out is good for now because that's still an improvement from how it's been lately. Maybe in time I'll change the process later to move two or three over for each critical statement so that I make sure the positive words are said more than the negative, but this is my first step.

So far, my personal competitiveness - that same drive that pushed me to improve my times and scores in high school swimming and golf - is pushing me to do better and one up myself, which is making me a more encouraging mom already. In other words, it's working. And with all of the kids a little more angsty lately, I'm hoping a changed mama will lead to a changed family. 

I want to enjoy them. I want them to enjoy me. I'm not talking about being a friend instead of a mother, but I do believe I can and should be friendlier than I've been lately. 

Will this keep working? I'm not completely sure. But I do know they are worth trying something, anything, even something as silly as wearing rainbow colored children's bracelets. After all, I want their inner voices to be uplifting, empowering, loving, kind, merciful, and full of grace.

And I want my voice to be all of those things too.

Note: I'm not sharing this for accolades or atta girls. I'm sharing it to be real. I'm also sharing it because I'm guessing I'm not the only one who is struggling with this. Finally, I'm sharing it because I find that posting ideas to the blog makes me feel more accountable to follow through with my intentions, even if no one ever asks me about it. Call me crazy, but going public gives me a sort of personal accountability I can't quite explain. So, there you have it. Here's to changed attitudes in my home, starting with mine.

What if we all agreed that different parenting choices don't have to be wrong?

Two of my children entered full time preschool last week. Yes, that's the same 6.5 hour schedule my older four have in elementary school, while most preschoolers in our area go a few days a week for half days.

For one, she needs the long days to fit in therapies and a nap and the building of endurance she'll need to (most likely) be mainstreamed in a typical kindergarten class with peers whose bodies aren't fighting against them with spasticity from cerebral palsy.

For the other, she is ready ready READY to go to school like her siblings. Knowing she didn't have the best start in life, we had her evaluated for the Title 1 preschool program in our district, which serves four year olds who are at risk for academic difficulties in kindergarten with the aim that the high quality, full day preschool program will set them up for success instead. She qualified. We didn't know until a few days before school started that she'd have a spot, though, because she had been waitlisted. Thankfully, a spot opened up in the program operating at the big kids' elementary school, so she goes there with them now, starting and ending 30 minutes earlier than they do so the little ones aren't overrun by the big kids.

Like I said in my last post, these are big changes for all of us!

As far as preschool goes, we didn't do it for any of our other children. One wasn't with us in preschool, so that's easy to explain. One was having too much fun being the only girl and the big sister whose little bro adored her, and I equally didn't want to send her anywhere and didn't want to have an external schedule of pick up and drop off and all that jazz. Her learning style worked just fine for working on early learning skills at home, and that suited us all best. Then the boys didn't do preschool because one was joining our family and adjusting to all that meant and the other, with us from the womb, was helping with that. Oh, and he was also having seizures that we didn't get controlled until just before kindergarten started, so there's that.

All that to say, preschool decisions are different for every child.

So are most parenting choices.

My children are not your children, and your children aren't mine, so that means our child-centered choices about what's best might not be the same.

And?

That's okay.

Our world operates on affirmation, though. In school, it's grades and rubrics and standardized tests and other measures of one singular norm. In the workplace, goals and performance reviews and raises, in which the specific job is considered but comparisons against other workers are also common. In parenting? I think the only real universal bar is "they're still alive at the end of the day." Of course, feeding and love and learning and so on are all part of that too, but examples of terrible parenting are clear while the range of good parenting is harder to define. 

Going back to the preschool example, I know friends who have felt judged for doing preschool or not doing preschool or doing too many days of preschool or doing not enough days of preschool or doing a too churchy preschool or doing a too secular preschool or spending too much on preschool or choosing a preschool with long days or being relieved when it's time for school to start again or crying too much when school resumes. And that's not even including the parents who work full time and so have their preschool aged children in some sort of program or childcare environment during business hours year round and the judgment they feel for that.

(Side note: Rock on, working parents. You're doing great, and you'll get no judgment from this stay at home mama.) 

What if we all agreed that different parenting choices aren't wrong?

Can we decide what's best for our kids and then not trouble ourselves with those who disagree or trouble others by trying to force our family's best onto their different dynamics?

And can we also recognize that sometimes we're not really being judged, even when we think we are?

(I could go on a tangent here about how you're actually judging someone when you judge that you think that they're judging you, but I haven't had enough coffee today to make that make sense.)

I could have made this about breastfeeding and bottlefeeding and tube feeding or private vs public vs home school or therapy intensives vs surgeries vs assistive devices or Botox vs Baclofen vs SDR (yes, we do it in special needs parenting circles too) or something else altogether. But? We've started two in daily preschool programs that are longer than the norm for our area, especially for families with a stay-at-home parent like me. 

I'm sure this is the right decision for our crew, and this post is my way of saying that. This post is also my way of letting friends know that I am 100% okay with whatever preschool choice they're making too. Parenting is hard enough even when it's a judgment-free zone, am I right? 

So enjoy this new school year, no matter what it brings and no matter what it looks like for your family. And? Be forewarned that at any moment in the coming weeks I might be celebrating that my days are child-free or mourning that I miss my babies.

Being sure of our decision doesn't mean being in control of my emotions, after all. 

warning: huge changes ahead!

Let's get this out of the way at the get go: no, we're not adopting again. I know when I usually post about big changes, that's the news, so let's clear that up from the start.

Y'all.

This week the oldest four started in 1st and 3rd grades. So that's four of the six in school all day.

Back in June, Zoe's IEP team - including us - all agreed she should be there for a full day to fit in all her therapies and educational interventions and to build stamina, as we're all thinking she'll probably be able to be mainstreamed in a typical kindergarten class two years from now. (Thankfully, her full day at preschool does include her much-needed nap!) She'll be at the same preschool as last year, where she is loved and loves going, starting Monday. So that makes five of the six in school all day.

Around the same time as Zoe's IEP meeting, Patu was screened for our district's Title 1 preschool program, which serves four year olds who are at risk for academic difficulties in kindergarten with the aim that a high quality, full day preschool environment will set them up for success instead. I won't get into all the reasons why we felt like that would be a good fit for her here, but most of them have to do with her rough start in life. The folks in the Office of Early Learning determined that she qualified for the program, but since they always have more kids who qualify than spots available, she was waitlisted since her needs and risk factors weren't as pressing as other children's. I wasn't surprised by her qualifying for the program or by her not qualifying quite enough to be served. I know how the system works. Well, today we got the call that a spot opened up for her in the Title 1 preschool class at the same elementary school where our big kids go. Yep, that makes six of the six in school all day. She has a staggered entry day on Thursday, and then she starts Monday.

So? Not only do we feel like each child is in exactly the right educational program for their needs and in amazing schools we love and trust (even though having our little girls in school all day will be hard for me!), I will be child free for six hours a day. Y'all, I can't even.

Want me to volunteer? Take on a project? Commit to something else? My answer is NO. I'm so excited to reclaim the house from mess and actually go to the gym and volunteer at the school without having to line up childcare to do so and tackle some writing projects I usually do after the kids are in bed and actually go to that doctor's appointment I keep canceling and get a haircut and possibly blog more consistently and maybe even put away the clean laundry instead of leaving it in baskets, so I'm not adding a dadgum thing until I get my bearings.

Also, I might nap. Just being honest here.

Please forgive me in advance for the slew of posts and pics and such as I try to figure out this new existence, because since becoming a mother, I have never had a time with all the kids in school. The last time I had no children during the day was 2006, because I had no children yet then. So please pray for all of us through this adjustment, because this is huge!

At 8, our girls are no longer surprised by hate, racism, and violence.

"The girls handled the conversations better than I would have hoped. As we talked about 9 black brothers and sisters in Christ being killed in a historic church, they took it well," I told Lee as I put on my blush Sunday morning.

My makeup brush dropped to the counter with his reply: "How sad."

He continued, "At 8, our girls are no longer surprised by hate, racism, and violence. They shouldn't handle it well. None of us should."

No, we shouldn't. But for my friends in the black community and allies like me who have been listening and learning, we grieved last week but we weren't shocked. While so many white friends see this as an isolated event, we see a pattern.

We hear Trayvon called a man whose hoodie made him worthy of death while the man who killed him is considered justified, even as his story since then has shown a pattern of hotheaded violence. We hear Mike Brown called a man and a thug and a menace and even a demon and Ferguson not race-motivated, even as we hear data that speaks differently. We hear Dajerria called a woman at 14, and we hear people continuing to defend the officer's actions even after he apologized and admitted he had overreacted. We hear about John Crawford being killed in a WalMart for holding a toy gun after a white couple made a 911 call in which they lied about what was happening to make him sound threatening. We hear Eric Garner blamed for the police brutality that led to his death because he resisted arrest and was selling loose cigarettes, nevermind that neither are capital crimes. We hear Tamir Rice called "a young man" by the police chief even though he was only 12 when officers shot and killed him for carrying a toy gun in the park. We hear white friends express that it's easier for them to believe that Freddie Gray severed his own spine than it is to believe that officers acted dishonorably. We hear them say "who?" when we talk about Aiyana, the seven-year-old girl who died when an officer discharged his weapon into a wall as she slept on the other side. We hear silence when Kalief committed suicide as if three years at Rikers without trial and with abuse didn't likely contribute to his mental state. We hear ourselves ask how differently the story would have played out if no one recorded the shooting of Walter Scott, and we pretend we don't know the answer.

And then we hear people ask again and again and again and again and again and again if maybe the murderous act of terrorism in Charleston was an assault on religion rather than race, even when the news was already reporting that the shooter said he wanted "to kill black people."

And then we hear Dylann Roof described as a young man with a blunt sugar-bowl haircut - even though he's older than Trayvon was and Mike Brown was and Tamir Rice was and Dajerria is, and they were all described as adults - and a loner and quiet and a misguided youth and a sweet kid and someone who probably has mental health issues, and we're not surprised. This is the usual minimizing narrative when the criminal is a white male, who might be described as smart or soft-hearted as we point fingers at bullying and failed mental health supports and childhood mistreatment and mental illness whereas we tend to point fingers at the criminal rightly and even the victim wrongly when he or she happens to be black.

(See this for more commentary on these disparities.)

And then we hear the judge handling Roof's first court date calling the shooter's family "victims" in this situation, which didn't sit well by itself but became even more concerning when paired with this judge's having been reprimanded in 2003 for using the n word from the bench. (For good reason, the judge has been removed from the case now, and we were a little surprised and thankful upon hearing that news.)

And then we hear Roof's name and see his face again and again, while the faces and names of Clementa Pinckney, Cynthia Hurd, Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Tywanza Sanders, Ethel Lance, Susie Jackson, Depayne Middleton Doctor, Daniel Simmons, and Myra Thompson aren't known as well by most of us.

We feel like we're listening on a loop while no one else notices that our ears are bleeding.

Rather than denying the patterns and preparing rebuttals, would you be willing to listen to us? To sit with our words before you respond? To consider how the lived experiences of others might differ from your own? To question why you're willing to listen more to me as a white woman than to people of color saying the same things? To celebrate the testimonies of forgiveness, yes, but also to continue to recognize the tensions of racist patterns that require such mercy to be extended again and again by our black brothers and sisters? To decry vandalism and violence in riots, yes, but also to try to understand the resigned anger behind the actions, the feeling that drastic acts are necessary to get white attention?

Would you consider learning those names I listed above like we have?

““In the meantime, Black folks will continue to go to church. We will worship and restore ourselves and mourn. As we have done after Trayvon, Michael, Eric, Medgar, Jordan, Tarika, Martin, Emmett, Eleanor and so many, many more. We will console and pray and hope that this sleeping country up wakes up. That others – self-aware, non-black folks – will see the full horror of Charleston and desire to exorcise the demons of our history and present culture.” ”

— — Joshua DuBois, We Need To Talk About White Culture

Then the next time this sort of things happens - and I sadly expect that there will be a next time, just like my daughters do - maybe you'll see the pattern too. Maybe you'll join us in being sad but not surprised.

And maybe you'll begin asking with us, "What can we do to change this?"

(I'm not going to answer that question here. No, this isn't a cop out as much as it's a cop out to expect every blogger to tell you what you should do in response. Simply put, I think the answer will be different for each of us. But doing nothing and saying nothing isn't going to bring about change, so DO SOMETHING and SAY SOMETHING. Please.)