Category: Parenting

Once a Father, Always a Father

Post author By Dre
Post date June 21, 2009
3 Comments on Once a Father, Always a Father

In honor of Father’s Day, President Obama made his feelings known about what it means, to him, to be a dad. He made a point that fatherhood extends far past conception, and is wrapped up in the way a dad raises his children.

I’ve known some wonderful fathers throughout the course of my life. I appreciate my own Dad more and more every day, especially now that I am a parent myself. My husband, the father of my children, is an amazing Dad. He lost his own father at a very young age, and had three wonderful men step up to the plate to fill that role. Without those men in his life, he wouldn’t be the person he is today.

There is one father whose dedication to his daughter has always amazed and inspired me. Today, Mike Spohr spends his first Father’s Day without his beloved Madeline, on whom he showered countless kisses and an immeasurable amount love and care.

The ladies of Room 704 (Dawn, V, and Leslie) created a lovely tribute to Mike, and many of us are posting it in his honor today. And Mike? Please remember, once you’re a father – you are always a father.

Much love to all of you fathers out there – today is your day!

——–

Serenity Now Sunday -For Mike, For Father’s Day

Sometimes, the best we can do is share a person’s experience and let them know we have their back. That while we may not how they feel, we recognize that there are days that are just going to suck beyond the telling of it. So today we celebrate firsts. Just a very few of Maddie’s firsts from the Spohr family flickr photostream:

First time being held by daddy

First time being held by mommy

Chillin’ after the first bath

First Christmas

First Sunshine, First Car Ride

First nap, when a totally embarrassing picture of Mike was taken

First Baseball Game

We celebrate all the joyous firsts with you,
and stand guard over you for all the firsts to come.

The Women of Room 704.

Life in general Parenting

Future Mothers-in-Law

On Friday, Meghan of A Mom Two Boys, All Mediocre, Hot Mom Reviews and Eat Drink and Blog brought the famed “two boys” and her mom to the ranch for a much anticipated visit. Also? Any more websites and Meghan’s going to be held personally responsible for my development of carpal tunnel syndrome.

Meghan and I have been quietly planning Alison and Dylan’s future wedding for some time now, so we were anxious to see how they would get along. Because, obviously, it would throw a wrench in our plans if they wound up hating each other.

Fortunately, it’s easy to have a good time when there are animals to see, fish to catch, and new toys to play with. Blythe and Zach played well together, too, and even share an affinity for rubber boots and injuring themselves.

Jeremy must have caught wind of our plans, though, because he took them for a boat ride and made sure to keep boys and girls separate, at all times. Way to kill the mood, Dad!

All too soon it was time for our friends to go, and I tried to capture the photo we’ll someday show at the wedding.

Dylan’s already thinking of ways to propose, I can tell. His mom can help him with that.

Kids Parenting

Little Lady

Post author By Dre
Post date June 6, 2009
15 Comments on Little Lady

I’m the parent of a First Grader. A very, very proud First Grader.

Alison has grown so much since the first day of Kindergarten.

She’s made new friends,

and grown closer to her BFF.

She reads, she loves math, she creates, thanks to the encouragement of an amazing teacher.

Suddenly, as if some sort of “independence” switch was turned on inside of her, there is a Little Lady standing where a Little Girl stood, just a short time ago.

Since the last day of Kindergarten (which was Friday, by the way):

She let me take a nap, while she read a book to herself.

She got her own snack when she was hungry.

She dressed herself, every day.

She did her own hair.

She cleaned her own room.

She remembered to feed and water her chicks, all on her own.

She let me take a shower, do some work, and clean up around the house while her sister napped.

She has used her manners, without fail.

She has been incredibly considerate of her sister’s feelings and personal space.

Suddenly, I see the young woman she will one day become.

She is beautiful beyond comprehension.

Kids Life in general Parenting

Even

Post author By Dre
Post date May 9, 2009
2 Comments on Even

This delightful piece of writing hangs in my mother’s dining room. It hangs from a red and white lanyard, and adorns a hand-made gift from my sister several years ago.

I read it often, and it has become one of my favorites.

The Lanyard – Billy Collins

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,

and I gave her a lanyard.

She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,

and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.

Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.

And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,

and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.

And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,

I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough

to make us even.

———–

Friday, when I picked Alison up from school, she proudly handed me a Mother’s Day card she’d made in class, along with a plastic cup filled with dirt. Protruding from the dirt was an inch-tall green stalk, a small plant she’d grown herself from a seed.

It doesn’t matter that her sister yanked the tiny plant from the dirt less than 24 hours later.

It doesn’t matter that Alison still sassed me and stayed up later than I intended.

Because while I know her efforts don’t make us even, I’m going to pretend, just for a little while,

that we are.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Kids Parenting

Different

Post author By Dre
Post date April 28, 2009
23 Comments on Different

Last night I was on Google Chat with Meghan, and we started talking about Alison, my 5 year old.

me: She’s what they call “gifted” but I’m trying to come up with a better name for it than that
I’ve got a post in my drafts about it, but haven’t had the balls to publish
Meghan: If I can publish my post, you can publish yours
HEH
me: GAH, don’t go THERE

So, just to prove to Meghan that I’m not a huge coward, here it is.

——–

Alison is different.

No, it’s OK. I know she is. It doesn’t offend me when people notice.

For the first few years of Alison’s life, I had nothing to compare her to. Not really, not in a way that was concrete. It was when she started preschool at age three that her difference became glaringly obvious.

“She’s so… different from the other kids,” the moms would say. They’d look from her to their own child (or children) and ask at what age she started doing this or that.

I became the queen of vague answers. They probably thought I had some sort of memory loss.

But the truth is, she’s not ‘normal’. She’s ‘gifted’. In her therapist’s words, “she reeks of giftedness”.

I cringe at the use of that word. Gifted. It is my belief that we all have gifts and talents to offer the world. So the fact that her brain works differently than the ‘normal’ brain, well… it’s different. But is it gifted? I struggle to find a more appropriate term.

If the ‘normal’ brain is a forest, a ‘gifted’ child’s brain is a jungle. You can’t turn a forest into a jungle, or a jungle into a forest. They are two completely different environments made up of the same key elements. One isn’t necessarily better than the other, they’re just different. People don’t go to Yellowstone National Forest and then complain that it isn’t a jungle.

So why do many other parents feel threatened by my daughter? She’s just a child, and she’s not trying to compete – she’s just being herself.

-Yes, my 5 year old reads at a 2nd grade level. She is capable of solving fairly complex mathematical equations. But she won’t wipe her own butt.

-She can grasp abstract concepts such as atoms and molecules, but she is too timid to go to a birthday party if there is even one person she doesn’t know in attendance.

-If we are having a problem with the wind blowing the door open, she will invent a door-closing mechanism in less than 2 minutes.



    But she refuses to dress herself.

In other words, she is different, but she can still be a pain in the ass. There are areas where other children are superior to her.

How do I relate all of that to another parent when she (or he, let’s be fair) feels that Alison’s ‘gift’ makes their child inferior? Here’s one of the myths about giftedness that I want to print out and keep in my pocket:

Giftedness is something to be jealous about:

This is perhaps the most damaging myth. More often than not, gifted children can feel isolated and misunderstood. They have more adult tastes in music, clothing, reading material and food. These differences to other children can cause them to be shunned and even abused verbally or physically by other children.

Alison feels so alone. She already knows she’s different. The kids don’t yet hold it against her, but she knows. She knows.

I’ve only told a handful of people about Alison’s ‘giftedness’ because I learned very early on that it is one of the surest ways to ruin a budding friendship – for myself as well as for my daughter. It’s the main reason I’ve never written about it here, on my blog. Please know, I’m not bragging. Far from it. I know ‘gifted’ sounds like a blessing, but in so many ways, it’s also a curse. And also? Try parenting a child with a higher IQ than your own.

I had originally decided that I wouldn’t even tell Alison until she was in High School, and maybe not even then. College, perhaps? On her 30th birthday? She already feels different – would it help or hurt her to confirm that she actually is? It’s something I struggle with all the time.

Especially because, God help us, people are starting to make comments about Blythe being ‘different’, too. At least they can be different together.