Raising Up The Youngest

Since preschool let out, I've been spending time as a real, true stay-at-home mommy for Olivia, the 4 year old. She doesn't have preschool. She doesn't have ballet. She doesn't have her big sister, who's away at school during the day (1 half day left). She doesn't have any planned activity. She has time, and she has me.

And there have been moments we are driving each other crazy.  She wants attention and I want to get dishes done. I want her to help me carry on the workings of the house, she wants me to make two buttons talk to each other. She tries to build a tower with blocks, it falls over, and she screams as if she's being maimed by a rabid cat. These moments sometimes work together to give me a headache by about 2pm. Sometimes she misses preschool and I miss work, if we're being honest.

And there have been other moments, when it's just me and her and a stack of books, and she points to the page just one more time and says, "Mommy, I noticed something that we never noticed before on this page. Look!" When she's helping me fold socks and figuring out for the first time how to fold them over (so proud!). When she's putting away silverware with crazy enthusiasm I could never muster, or playing tic-tac-toe with me on the easel chalkboard and drawing X's inside O's to contrive a win...There are a thousand of those moments, and we've been home together (full-time) for maybe 2 weeks. I am realizing she's a totally different child when it's just the two of us for an extended period of time.

Here's the child she is when she's the little sister. She gets frustrated really quickly. She screams. She kicks her feet and squeezes her eyes shut and throws whatever is in her hands. She reaches down and grabs her shirt and bites it. Sometimes she misses and bites her own arm. 

"I can't believe they're going to the ball without me."

When she's the little sister, she waits for someone to tell her what to do...what to play, how to play it. She watches somebody else draw pictures because she can't draw them well enough herself. She plays games that are her big sister's idea almost all the time. She tries to pick up chapter books and pretends to read them, but gets quickly frustrated and bored. She gets into trouble while her sister is reading something that's beyond her, or if someone chooses to watch a show that's "over her head". She is forced to endure what's "over her head" so much more than Rosemary ever had to. 

These are moments she seeks attention. They're moments she begins to pester whoever happens to be nearest. She steals her daddy's hat and runs off with it. She finds something glass and breakable and waves it over her head. She sneaks into her sister's room and hides all her treasures in the bottom of her own closet. Or...she just leans over and whacks somebody, just because. No reason.

At the beach. Monkey see, monkey do.

But the Olivia who's no longer the youngest is a different person altogether, when she's able to take on a different role. Perhaps my views of her are too much affected by The Birth Order Book, although so much has been written about birth order and how it affects our personalities as they develop. An excerpt from this article by Frank K. Sulloway, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, sums up my experience with my youngest completely, though. There seems to be something to the birth order research. Here's what speaks to me: 

The experience of the youngest
Youngest children are supposedly more able to successfully pace themselves against older siblings without experiencing psychological exhaustion as the middle child(ren) may encounter (Buckley, 1998). They are thought to develop good social skills fostered by constant peer interaction. Individuals occupying this position in family dynamics have been found to be secure, yet dependent, which has been attributed to having many caretakers throughout childhood. Difficulty in establishing autonomy has been observed in adulthood, with accompanying feelings of inferiority and concerns that they are not regarded seriously (Richardson & Richardson, 1990). This is compounded by the realisation that throughout childhood everyone else was stronger, older and more competent, and the worry that they can never compete on equal footing (Ernst & Angst, 1983).

I believe that it's important for me to create opportunities that allow my "littlest" to develop some autonomy. She does this in preschool, I guess, but I want her to develop it when she's with members of our family, too. 

The big kids are out of school after tomorrow, so I'm a little anxious about the "big kid/little kid" dynamic around here. 

Am I over-thinking again? What can I do to help my youngest realize that she can be her own kid, even when her sister is busy being her big sister? 

The Psychology of Mommy Guilt...and Hair

I am growing out my hair--because my girls need me to have mermaid princess hair instead of the pixie hair I wanted. Well, that's part of the reason. Also,  I believe my husband looks wistfully at pictures of me with longer hair, even though he'd never, ever, ever utter the words, "I wish you'd grow out your hair."

So those are the secondary reasons I'm growing it out. The main reason is that the shorter hair messes with my self-concept enough that I'm sick of doubting myself. Let me explain.

You see, I wanted Hermione Granger's hair--the cut after the Harry Potter movies. I wanted the hair of every girl in every picture on Pinterest under "pixie hair". And I got my pixie cut, and I was elated. I was ecstatic. I was edgy and daring--or at least my hair was those things. And I can "do" shorter hair. I believe I can pull it off. It took me less than 5 minutes to fix, and it always looked good.

Me after my pixie cut. Easy-peasy hair...

I was also freaking out that I might look like a boy, and wondering who the edgy and daring girl in the mirror was when I'm clearly still "feet planted firmly in her secure, stable, and often boring  life Jessica". I felt that I needed girly accessories and earrings all the time so that I'd look feminine.

One day this lady at preschool walked by and said, "Oh! Oh MY! You cut your hair! It's very...interesting." That didn't do wonders for the ole' self-esteem.

Months went by, and I continued to wonder what people thought when they looked at me, and if they weren't talking about why in the world I'd cut my hair, and wondering if they thought my haircut meant that I had left my husband and taken a girlfriend, or if perhaps I'd undergone chemotherapy and they just hadn't known about it, and of course now I was growing it back in. And I also wondered why half the posts on Pinterest under "pixie hair" explained how to grow it out. I mean, if it was a good cut to have, why was everybody getting rid of it? All of these excuses for growing my hair show weakness in me, but what can I say? I thought them, and I admit it.

And now my hair is getting longer and...guess what. I am thinking that perhaps I was better off with it short. It's starting to flip out funny, and I am remembering again how much of a pain the longer hair was to fix, and when I see pictures of it when it was longer, I keep thinking of how much more flattering the pictures of my hair shorter are. 

  

Anyhow, sometime in the middle of the moment this morning when I was looking into the mirror and loathing my hair, I thought of how so many of us look at the decisions we make as mommies in the same way I was looking at  my hair. We don't look at the decisions we make with acceptance, and we don't look at the decision-maker (ourselves) with tolerance. Instead, we pick at those decisions like we'd pick at a rough scab. We pick at them until they ooze.

Acceptance and tolerance: the cure for "Mommy Guilt"?

I guess that's called "Mommy Guilt". Why do we do this to ourselves? I've worked full-time with a baby, stayed at home with a baby and a preschooler, and worked part-time with my kids. And there's one thing I've learned: having kids makes it nearly impossible to achieve a life balance, no matter what setup you have. There are advantages and disadvantages to each setup, and no matter what you choose, you wonder what things would have been like if you'd have chosen differently.

And it's that way with more than the stay-at-home mom vs. working mom debate. We moms have to make choices about public school vs. private school vs. homeschooling, cloth or disposable diapers, the number of and types of activities our kids go to after school, how to allocate money for college, if and when we will allow our kids to have cell phones, who to leave our children to in our wills. 

I have spent hours second-guessing the choices I've made about my hair. I've spent years second-guessing the choices I've made as a mommy. I wonder if, in the end, I wouldn't be happier and everybody involved wouldn't be better off if I would just go with my gut--if I would just make decisions and stick with them. I wonder what it would take for me to stop looking back. 

But you know I'm going to grow my hair so I can get it cut again, and so do I. And then I'm going to grow it right back out again. 

And worrying over the decisions we make about our kids is one way that we love them.

Have you made any big parenting decisions and then second-guessed yourself later? Have you made any big hair decisions and second-guessed yourself afterwards? I'd love to hear about either one!

photo credit: sh0dan via photopin cc photo credit: Neal. via photopin cc

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