Now that Zack is in Middle School, his homework has increased ten fold.  I presumed that with a little bit of help to get him started, he could manage it by himself.  But after the first few weeks in September of me yelling at him for not getting things done, I realized he was in over his head.  It’s not that he’s not capable of doing the actual work; it’s that he’s not able to organize the assignments coming from five different teachers, all with different due dates.  Once I conceded to the fact that I had to be the one to outline, on a daily basis, what needed to be done and when, he’s been doing great.

     I’ve also been using the “delayed gratification” approach: work first, reward later.  Zack’s chosen reward is video games.  He’ll walk through fire, over shards of glass, if it means he can play a half hour of Minecraft or Terraria.  Using that as the carrot successfully motivates him to stay focused.  Things were going great.  I thought I had it figured out.  I thought the next step was to teach Zack how to prioritize and organize himself.

     But as the school year progresses, the homework assignments are increasing.  The list of what he needs to accomplish before playing video games is getting longer and longer.  In addition, his teachers are raising their standards, requiring more attention to detail.  Zack’s starting to fight the delayed gratification approach, and I’m hearing “Can I play screens now?” every three minutes.  I’m starting to question the success of my system.

     My middle guy Mason is Mr. Personality plus!  At just nine-years-old, he’s the life of the party and can work a room like nobody’s business.  The more attention he gets, the more entertaining he is.

     However, the flip side of being such a people pleaser is he sometimes allows people’s opinions to matter too much.  I don’t want that for him.  I don’t want him to let feedback from others define him.

     Consequently, I struggle with how much to praise him, how much to build him up.  I’m his mom.  I should be his #1 cheerleader.  Yet I want his self-esteem to be rooted within him, not established by me, or the outside world.

     My friend Amy recently gave me great advice.  She suggested that when he gives me his report card, plays in a baseball game, or performs in a piano recital and wants my praise, I should ask him, “How do you think you did?”  Turning the mirror back on him puts him in charge of verbalizing his success, his accomplishments.  More importantly, it has him assessing his own performance, and owning the outcome.  In this world where he’s going to have critical teachers and employers, he needs to start determining for himself when he’s done a good job, and when he hasn’t.  If he can do that for himself, others’ opinions won’t make or break him.

     My son Zack really struggled this year choosing a Halloween costume.  In previous years, he readily chose the passion of the moment.  However, being in Middle School now, he was questioning what costumes would be well received, and what costumes would be ridiculed.  Ultimately, he decided on Percy Jackson from the book series he has been devouring lately.

     Last Friday, when he was allowed to wear a costume to school, he put on the Percy Jackson “Camp Half Blood” shirt, the necklace I made him with beads specific to the storyline, jeans and a hoodie.  Yet he left for the bus with the hoodie zipped up to the top, covering the shirt and necklace.

     When he got home from school, I asked him how his day was.  He looked down at the floor and admitted he never unzipped his sweatshirt, keeping his costume concealed the entire day.  However, that Saturday, when he was allowed to wear a costume to his karate dojo, the shirt and necklace were donned with excitement, revealed and displayed for all to see.

     Zack isn’t great at putting his emotions into words.  But I know him well enough to know that the costume issue was about fitting in, avoiding ridicule, and protecting what matters to him.  He loves the Percy Jackson novels.  He has chewed through book after book like candy.  It’s all he and Mason have talked about for months, endlessly.

     He knew there was a chance that the Middle School crowd would make fun of him for that.  So he hedged his bet by zipping up his sweatshirt.  At school, he felt things out and his instinct told him not to unzip it.

     Conversely, he’s good friends with all the kids at the dojo, and they’re all like-minded.  He knew for certain his costume would be accepted and admired there.  He didn’t even want a sweatshirt, zipped or unzipped, even though it was cold.

     Some moms would argue that it’s our job to build our kids up to a place of such self-confidence that other’s opinions don’t matter.  I used to think that was possible, and I was striving for that.  But this incident has me seeing things differently. 

Continue reading →

     I am reading Mark Batterson’s Draw The Circle, The 40 Day Prayer Challenge.  In it, Batterson says, “When we share a testimony, we are loaning our faith to others.  When we listen to a testimony, we are borrowing faith from others.  Either way, the church is edified and God is glorified.”

     On September 8th, family members, friends and I drew a Prayer Circle around my sister Kerry, a mom of four children who was suffering terribly from depression.  I am THRILLED to announce that on day 28, Kerry told me she felt joy!  But still we circled.

     Tomorrow, day 40, we will finish drawing our Prayer Circle around Kerry.  Miraculously, she is still experiencing joy!  But that circle won’t be complete until her testimony is shared.  That’s the only way to show our gratitude to all who joined the circle.  More importantly, that’s the only way to point the praise in the right direction: to God.

     So today I am turning over my blog space to my sister Kerry for that purpose.  Enjoy!

————————————————

I have suffered from depression since about the age of 10.  It wasn’t constant in my younger days, but as I have gotten older, it has morphed into what the professionals call “Major Depressive Disorder” (MDD).  In layman’s terms, that means that despite medication, I feel so low almost all of the time: So low that the sadness and hopelessness I feel has made it near impossible to function and perform my daily responsibilities.

At the urging of my primary care physician, I decided to try a fairly new treatment called Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS).  It’s function is to stimulate areas of the brain that are under active in depressed people.

My treatments were set to begin on September 8th.  Of course I had every intention of making prayer part of that regimen, but planned to keep the whole situation under close wraps, family and close friends only.  That is until my sister was inspired to draw a 40-day prayer circle around me. She planned to invite people I know and love, as well as people I have never even met to join her in spirit each day to recite a prayer she had composed from The Book of Psalms specifically for healing for me.  Despite my inclination to keep my private life my own, I agreed. I was just that desperate for relief and help. Continue reading →

     Zack brought home the most amazing artwork when he was in elementary school.  Although I was completely aware of how talented he was, I was too naive to realize that his art teacher deserved a lot of the credit.  It wasn’t until Zack transitioned to his next school, and was bringing home mediocre art at best, that I realized just how amazing his elementary art teacher was.

     She had a gift.  She inspired and drew out the best in her students.  Because of her, Zack’s rendition of Van Gogh’s The Starry Night has been prominently displayed on the wall in our bathroom ever since.  (It sounds like a strange place to hang it, but realistically it’s the one place where people actually pause and look, versus artwork hung in the hallway that people just walk by.)

    Although it has an uncanny likeness to the original, there is one thing that has always bothered me about it.  When Zack corrected the direction the half moon faces, he barely erased his first attempt.  The lines of the old moon are still dark and completely visible.  I’ve always wondered why his art teacher allowed that glaring error, why she didn’t make him erase his mistake better.  I’m sure if he had tried hard enough, he could have touched it up so his flaw would have been wiped out all together.

     When I picked my daughter Jocelyn up from kindergarten last week, she told me she was “home sick” at school.  I didn’t know she even knew that term, never mind what it means.  When I asked her, she told me she had heard me talk about “home sickness” with Zack after his first sleepover.  With some more digging, I discovered there had been a substitute teacher in Jocelyn’s class that day, one who had made her write more than her regular teacher does.  She claimed that is what caused the “home sickness.”

     My gut told me she hadn’t really experienced “home sickness.”  Instead, I think she latched on to that term when her hand got tired, she didn’t want to write anymore, but was forced to.  Sure, she would have preferred to be at home playing with toys rather than being at school working, but I think the real emotion she was feeling was a combination of being tired, frustrated, not familiar with the substitute teacher, and feeling like she had no control.  When I tried to explain this to her to see if I was on target, she adamantly said NO!  She felt homesick and that was that! 

     There were Student Council elections in Mason’s fourth grade class a few weeks ago.  I was thrilled when he said he wanted to run.

     Although Mason is an excellent writer, he was struggling to write his speech.  Soon after stepping in to help, I started to wonder if he knew what a Student Council Representative does.  When I asked him, he admitted he didn’t have a clue.  So I did my best to explain what a Representative does.

     I’ve been scratching my head ever since, wondering why he would take on something he knew absolutely nothing about.  There were Representatives in his class last year.  Maybe they made it look easy and fun.  Or maybe he thought making a poster and giving a speech would be exciting: he’d feel important having all that attention.  Whatever it was, he was drawn to it and decided to give it a try.

     In my judgmental way, I thought, Only a child would take on something he knows absolutely nothing about.  A heartbeat later, I realized, I am in no position to judge: I took on motherhood.

     As Mason was getting ready for school today, he glanced out the window and cried, “Deer!  Mommy!  There are deer across the street!”  I ran downstairs and met him at the front door.  Sure enough, there were three deer on the expanse of lawn across from our house: a mother and her two fawns.  Mason, Jocelyn and I just stood in our doorway in wonder.  We stared at the deer, and the deer stared back.  They were so beautiful, so majestic with their heads held high, their white tails curled up.  It was one of those moments when time stops, the air stands still, and you’re fully present: a holy moment.  After three or four minutes, they gracefully sauntered into the woods.  “Wow,” Mason breathed.  “That was amazing!”

     Some people go their whole lives never seeing a deer out of captivity.  Yet we got to see three, from our front door, on a random Thursday morning, all because Mason took a moment to look up from what he was doing.  It was amazing!

     An acquaintance called and left me a voicemail over the weekend.  I don’t know her well; our boys were in the same class years ago but have since drifted apart.  Her message started off with, “I feel like I only call you when I need something…”  But I didn’t care.  I love helping others, connecting them to people and resources, solving their problems.  It makes me feel needed and useful.  So even though it had been years, I welcomed her call.