The Right Brained Mama

I had questions like:

• Why is an international move easier for me than sticking to a meal plan?
• How come every time I vacuum, I rearrange the furniture?
• Why do I re-invent my kids’ bedtime schedule so frequently?
• What makes me claustrophobic about tradition?
• Why do I love hosting on-the-spot parties instead of advance planning?
• How is it that when I intend to do the laundry, I end up cleaning the car out?
• Why do I race myself to complete chores?

I wondered if I had ADD, procrastination, or a spirit of rebellion. Maybe I’m just a rubbish housekeeper, forgetful, or lazy–?

I couldn’t figure it out. The fly-by-the seat of your pants Laura got grounded with the birth of baby #4. I love living with lots of moving pieces, but this was hectic.

Plus-

1.)  Boundaries, rules, and consistency help kids feel safe. In child development, we talk about the balance of consistency and novelty. My kids deserve more structure.

2.) I can’t get help with the house or train babysitters effectively because I am always reinventing wheels that aren’t even broken.

3.)  James suggested the constant creativity feels disrespectful at times.

After percolating these ideas in my head for about a month while simultaneously developing goals for the New Year, I had an epiphany. I realised that the issues I’m dealing with aren’t signs of illness, slothfulness, or negligence. I’m just right brained.

Cue sigh of relief. I’m not mentally ill, slothful, or negligent.

I’m just right-brained.

I’m right brained– I love the big picture, colouring-outside-the-lines, being holistic, creative thinking, doing things randomly, feeling spontaneous, and seeking adventure. So if something is typically a routine task, like household chores, cooking, laundry, or child rearing, I like to turn it into something I can succeed at by using my strengths and putting a dash of sparkle in it.

My left brained friends are ordered, logical, routine, strategic, planners, cautious and safe. They have schedules for everything and take unstructured activities and make them less flexible by adding rules or scripts in order to gain more control.

Conceptualising moms as primarily left or right brained thinkers has given me an interesting insight into the patterns of parents’ strengths.

I need adventure.

Now that my family is out of major life transitions, I am starting to itch for excitement. The mundane is so underwhelming. I polled moms, “What do you do for adventure?” 

One friend said, “I clean out the garage or organise a closet.”  Many moms admitted they don’t have adventure– nor do they crave it.  I realise that the moms who have days devoted to specific household chores, grocery store lists, buy the same brands, cook the same dinners, and thrive on order are more than likely lefties.

But I shouldn’t make laundry the adventure.

Right brained-ness has served me well, but my little left hemisphere is so atrophied. I feel like I’ve gone back to motherhood preschool to learn basics: routine, tradition, self-discipline, housekeeping and consistency.

So here I am meal planning (just barely), sticking to a bedtime routine for the kids, teaching them consistent chores, making the bed everyday, putting things back in the same place every time. Gradually it’s feeling less like this-

Now I am getting back in touch with my right brain for things that require it- blogging, poetry, photography, and figuring out if there is something else for me in this season. Theoretically if I can automate the household routines and organisation, I can have more time for the things I’m passionate about. Right?

Parent Win: Conquering the Morning

I hate New Year’s resolution because I think everyday is a perfect day for a new beginning. However, Christmas break gave me time to reflect on what areas in our family needed changing. For the next 7 days, I’m sharing simple changes that have significantly benefited our family life.

Day 1: The Morning Routine:

I am a free-spirit, so routine and rituals kind of feel restrictive to me. However, I was perpetually tired of the 100 different combinations that our mornings held before the school run.

So I made one simple change:

The kids have to be dressed before they go downstairs.

Breakfast is downstairs. My kids are totally motivated by food, so the two eldest are dressed within seconds of waking up. This has literally added 30 minutes to our morning, and I’m not doing the stair master racing up and down because my 4 year old is sitting on the sofa in his pyjamas.

He can never find anything.

“Where’s my shirt?”

It’s on the table, buddy.

“What table mom?”

The only table in your room, son. 

“Where’s my trousers?”

By the shirt on the table.

“What shirt?”

With this extra time, I’ve been intentional to sit down with the kids to eat breakfast. I love that we are now eating together instead of me standing over the sink with a crumpet.

On the subject of crumpets, every American always asks about “tea and crumpets.” I didn’t actually see or eat a crumpet for an entire year after I moved here. Now I have at least one every Monday with my group of amazing girls (aka The Luminous Ladies) and nearly all of the other days that end in a -y.

Yum. Yum. Yum.

I pull out some craft bits and art books for them to do while I finish a load of laundry or unload the dishwasher. I haven’t officially told them, but we now operate a no media policy in the morning, and they haven’t really seemed to notice. Win!

“Pretend that . . .”

I hear my two favourite childhood words so often in the mornings now. It is such a beautiful, beautiful thing when children create their own worlds in their imagination. Nothing makes me feel more satisfied as a parent than when my children are content and exhilarated with nothing but each other and their shared ideas.

Playing school. Can you spot Scarlett?

Even better, the kids have started playing in the back garden before school. It’s -2 c outside and the kids like experimenting with freezing their toys inside of ice blocks. They also enjoy scraping the ice off of the car. This is such a different atmosphere from the kids that I had last year who I had to battle with over getting dressed and turning off the TV.

I love these kids.

Simple, simple changes with big, big results.

 Update:

Last Friday, I slept poorly so we gave the kids media in the morning. Sometimes you need a reminder of why you are firm about your rules. It was awful.

Fool me once kids . . .

Never again.

Motherhood: Goals, Objectives, and the Missing Performance Review

When I worked full time, our in-home nanny told me she wished taking care of children came with goals, objectives, and measurable feedback.

Now that I’m a stay-at-home mom, I totally crave a report card. What makes a successful mother? How do I know that I am prioritizing and emphasizing the correct areas?

I would love for someone to give me goals and objectives and provide constructive feedback on my mothering.  But where do I get my feedback from? A social worker? My friends? My kids? My husband? Me? I ran through some options that I could measure my parenting success level on. I eliminated these scales, then did some research to find me a working model performance review.

What I’m Tempted to Use & Why It Fails . . .

My Children’s Behavior: My friends can testify: My 5 year-old daughter’s tantrums are absolutely torture. Nothing keeps you eating humble pie like a kid hitting, kicking and screaming at you in the middle of a play-date. But then there are some days like this week, when she demonstrated resiliency and maturity beyond her years while getting treatment for nasty eye infection, bravely tolerating “moldy sock flavoured” antibiotics and quite a bit of poking and prodding.

Fun fact: When you put orange contrast dye in your eyeball, your snot glows in the dark

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My 12 Step Program for friends and family members of drug addicts taught me invaluable lessons. Listening to parents struggle to process how the same parenting style led to drastically different results for their children taught me that it is foolish to view children’s outcomes as direct correlations of your parenting. If your kid abuses drugs, you don’t deserve the blame. Your kid made choices. But if your kid becomes a doctor, you don’t deserve the credit. Your kid made choices.  I watched this play out over and over again as parents asked, “How can this be?”

When you stop looking at your child’s behaviour as a direct reflection of your parenting (and it is a struggle), you allow them to suffer their own consequences, figure out their own path, and experience victories that they earned. You can recognize their strengths and weaknesses without guilt or pride fogging up your view. I’m working on giving myself some space AND most importantly, other parents some grace for their kids too. Bad kids aren’t always the product of bad parenting.

“NOO! Squirt it in his EYE next time.” I shouldn’t be surprised my kids’ behavior does not reflect the values I instill in them. MY behavior doesn’t always reflect my own values. *Gulp.

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Their school performance:  The UK and US education systems both struggle to measure academic performance. Does it account for multiple intelligences? That would be hard to argue. So what is a standardized test actually measuring? Can your child regurgitate information? Sit still and fly under the radar? Because our kids have different temperaments and innate abilities, it isn’t really fair to measure your parenting by your child’s report card. It might not be a reflection of your effort, but, for better or worse, their own unique potential or the system’s preference for particular personality traits (introvert vs. extrovert, linear thinker vs. creative, etc.).

Comparison to their co-horts?  Conclusion: My kids are better than some, not as good as others. Whatever I am looking for, I could find it.

Our relationship: I am not one of those moms who is their kids’ BFF. I’m an enforcer of bedtime, TV turner-off-er, vegetable police, and a clean room boss. We have great times together, but when push comes to shove, their morality/character/discipline is higher on my list than their approval of me. So I won’t let how my kids feel about me on a moment-to-moment basis drive my performance assessment. Tough love is true love.

Remember telling your mom that you weren’t her friend? This little nugget pulled that line on me. Your friends are at school. Your mom is at home telling you to clean your room.

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So What is the Goal here? What am I looking for? What am I doing? 

Being a nerd, I searched for a good-old meta-analysis about parenting. I found this nugget of gold in a literature review on enmeshed parenting. You can learn so much about what something is (good parenting) by what it is not (enmeshment).

Here is a good summary of healthy parenting according to these researchers. I created my own version of a performance review, a self-check to see how I’m doing. I identified some strengths and some weaknesses to work on and put it on my fridge.

“An important task of parenting, then, is one of striking a healthy balance between attachment to the child and separating in a way that encourages and supports the child’s development of autonomy”(Bradshaw, 1989; Forward, 1989; Hann-Morrison, 2006; Love, 1990; Minuchin, 1974).

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Parenting Performance Self-Review: Emotional Development

by: Mommy2mummy, adapted from Dee Hann-Morrison’s “Maternal Enmeshment: The Chosen Child”

Circle the rating that best describes your performance in each area.

NI= Needs Improvement, S= Satisfactory, EE= Exceeds Expectations

1.	My child has the freedom to think and feel independently of me without feeling a sense of betrayal.	NI	S	EE
2.	I actively create opportunities for my child to participate in age-appropriate privileges.	NI	S	EE
3.	I develop and assign age-appropriate responsibilities for my child.	NI	S	EE
4.	I encourage my child’s independence.	NI	S	EE
5.	I have established clear guidelines and rules for bedtime.	NI	S	EE
6.	I have established clear guidelines and rules for mealtimes.	NI	S	EE
7.	I have established clear guidelines and rules for public.	NI	S	EE
8.	I have established clear guidelines and rules for ________.	NI	S	EE
9.	There is an appropriate exchange of physical affection.	NI	S	EE
10.	I actively encourage my child to be inner directed.	NI	S	EE
11.	I assist my child to develop a solid self-  firm individual beliefs and interests.	NI	S	EE

According to this model, throwing out your Pinterest picture to let your kid design their own birthday cake shows an appreciation for their own ideas- and demonstrates respect for their individuality.

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Looking at this sheet, I can tell you that several times this week, I failed to give my kids consistent clear behavioral expectations and it resulted in fits that could have been avoided. I’ve got some NI areas on my sheet for sure, but I also highlighted some strengths- I’m good at encouraging my children’s independence.

I love this because it provides a good framework for parenting. it’s not so much about French lessons or horseback riding, cry-it-out method or co-sleeping, but fostering environments that nurture your child’s own unique design.  I can measure the opportunities and guidelines I am accountable for, stop comparing my efforts to other mothers, relax that I’m doing the best I can and thank God for the resiliency of children in the areas I lack.