Finding Gratitude in Unlikely Places

I am grateful for hair-pulling, biting, pushing, shoving, screaming and crying.  Ok, not so much those behaviors, per se, but what they represent.

I was talking with a mother of two young children this morning who says she struggles with helping her children play together successfully.  Her 6 year-old likes to make elaborate lego projects that her 2 year-old brother likes to take down Godzilla-style.  She has tried convincing her daughter to build these projects in her room.  She has tried redirecting her son toward different toys.  Neither of these strategies has worked.

They want to be together, which is nice, I told her.  It's what I tell myself when my own daughters have the same fight...over and over again.  They could play in separate rooms or with separate toys,  goodness knows we have more than enough to go around.  But the separation wouldn't meet their needs for togetherness, which is a strong need, indeed.  And sometimes they play together successfully.  I just tend not to notice, since no one is screaming, "Mom, help!" at those moments. So I try to remind myself of the lovely part of their siblinghood when I extract one from the other, teeth bared and tears flowing.

I've learned a lot from clients who've consulted with me over the years about finding gratitude in unlikely places.  They've found it in seeing they have choices, even when those choices aren't the  greatest.  In finding calm in an otherwise anxiety-provoking time while washing dishes or pulling weeds.  In having a major life crisis hold a mirror up to their life and finding they don't like what they see and using their resources to change it.

There is much to be grateful for, even in trying times.  Sometimes we have to look beyond the initial ugliness to find the beauty at its core.

Channeling Your Orchid's Yetser Hara

I am really not up on my Torah, but the concept of "yetser hara" as described in Wendy Mogel's "Blessing of a Skinned Knee" makes a lot of sense. The way I understand it, yetser hara is one's inclination toward rule-breaking and adventure. Its counterpart, yetser tov, is our inclination to hold these desires in check, to toe the line.

Using these concepts to better understand how parents must tailor their parenting style to a child's personality, it may be useful to think about how orchids may have a more generous dose of "yetser hara" than their dandelion peers. This inclination toward risk-taking, while useful in many settings, seems an obvious disadvantage when breaking a rule might lead to a lack of safety, such as in failing to look both ways to cross the street. With orchids, parents would be wise to choose which rule-following battles to fight. Perhaps a parent might be more lenient about their orchid daughter climbing to the top of the monkey bars unassisted, while sticking to their guns about having an adult present in the kitchen while operating the stove.

I was thinking about how yetser hara would also apply to discipline, namely, that old stand-by, the time out. Children with more yetser tov, might do fine to sit compliantly for three minutes in a time out chair, but orchids might need some help bringing their yetser hara in check. Perhaps parents might prefer to model how one brings oneself under control by sitting quietly for one minute next to their "timed out" youngster. A parent could practice yoga breathing techniques (see early posts for ideas), repeating a mantra, or simply sitting quietly in a meditative, seated position. Whatever one chooses to do to model controlling one's own yetser hara, it seems that getting into a battle of wills with an orchid over discipline is a losing propostion. And yet plenty of well-intentioned parenting books would have you believe otherwise.

I think that's the "art" part of parenting. While parenting books would have you believe there's one magic formula for parenting children, the reality is that our children's temperments run the gamut. Yes, they need to learn discipline, but they also need to challenge themselves to grow and become the unique adult they are meant to be. A skinned knee is indeed a blessing if it allows a child to test her limits safely.

The Upside of Orchids

After reading my last two posts, one might conclude that it's better to be a dandelion than an orchid. Sure, one forgoes the shot at the particularly odd brilliance of a well-nurtured orchid, but doesn't being an intelligent, well-adjusted dandelion outweigh the risks of emotional instability that come with orchidness?

Maybe. Maybe not. In thinking about children I've known, one set of siblings stuck out immediately as a clear illustration of the upside orchids and, by extension, the risks involved in dandelion-ness.

Years ago, I was a substitute teacher in a rural New Mexican school district. I taught all grades, so I got to know several sets of siblings fairly well. In one family of six siblings I taught the eldest 6th-grade girl Shania, a second-grade boy David, and the kindergartener Brianna. Brianna and Shania were in special education. David was not. When I taught Shania, I would ask her about her work. She would answer, "I don't know" to my questions often, but with further probing, I often found she did know. She knew a lot. She lacked confidence in herself, and risking being wrong seemed a safer option than being proved wrong. Shania, I suppose, fits the dandelion mold well.

Brianna I taught in the beginning of the year, and then again toward the end. When I first met her, her teacher was drawing dots on her paper for her to trace in order to write her name. When I began teaching her special education class in late April, she sat waiting patiently as I asked the class to write their names on their papers. "Brianna, does your teacher still make the dots for you?" She nodded. "Phoney, baloney, I know you can write your own name! You may have her fooled, but you're not foolin' me!" (Okay, I didn't know if she could write her name, but it was a gamble that ended up paying off, luckily.) Brianna, in shaky handwriting wrote her name, looked up at me, and beamed. She did it!

How did she manage to go through almost an entire school year without once being asked to write her own name? I don't mean to cast blame on her very over-worked teacher, but I can see how Brianna managed to slip through in this case. First, she looks really young. She's petite, and looks much younger than the other five and six year-olds in her class. And she rarely speaks. (I remember she got pulled out by the speech therapist quite often. I often wondered if her speech pathology was a motor problem or just one of extreme shyness.) Brianna mostly sits quietly, smiles, and looks heart-breakingly cute. In an otherwise rowdy kindergarten class, she's every teacher's dream. And an unmistakable dandelion.

David is everything his sisters aren't. Prone to outbursts, tears, and frustration, I know he drove his regular teacher to fits of screaming herself. When I subbed David's class, not one minute into our day David had his first meltdown. I asked the class to take out their pencils and paper. David erupted, "I don't have a pencil! I don't have a pencil!" "Maybe you can borrow one from a friend?" I offered. "I don't have any friends. Nobody likes me! They all hate me!" "Nonsense," I said. "I know your class is very kind and helpful. I'm sure somebody here would like to be a good friend and loan you a pencil. Now, who here has a pencil they'd like to share with David?" Hands shot up among cries of "me, me! I do! I do!" David, within his family as well as his class, was an orchid among dandelions.

After reflecting on my experiences with these three siblings, it's apparent to me how Brianna and Shania tested into special education and David didn't. David, when faced with a problem he couldn't solve, would dissolve into tears and cries of "I can't do it! I can't!" And someone: a teacher, a parent, a fellow student, would come to his aid and help him solve his problem. Brianna and Shania, on the other hand, would say nothing about the difficulty, and thus, never gained mastery over tasks. Not because they couldn't do it, mind you, but because no one noticed that they needed help. And so their brother's orchidness became a cumulative advantage that determined his testing above the threshold for special education while his sisters fell below it. His orchidness expressed itself in such a way that allowed him to get the help he needed while his dandelion sisters slipped through the academic cracks.

It makes me wonder, as a parent, when do I fail to notice when my more dandelion-leaning daughter needs help simply because she doesn't express it in a way I've come to recognize in her older orchid sister? Perhaps there are other downsides to dandelion-ness that have gone unnoticed. I hope that for Shania and Brianna, someone recognized that despite quiet, good-natured ways, they needed academic nurturing just as much as their orchid brother.