Parenting in our 50s

This could easily be a series on its own.  Parenting littles in your fifties is not the same as parenting littles in your twenties or thirties.  The obvious differences come with the changes we often go through as we age.

Being older, it’s harder to go without sleep.  We are tired!  I say this with some restraint. A lot of that is personality and how we are made.  I naturally function better without sleep than my husband.  For most of our parenting years, I got to be a stay-at-home mom while my husband worked out of the house, so I always took night duty.  (It was a less happy situation when I was working full time and still did night duty!) Even in the gap when we did not have little sleep-thieves, there were occasions I pulled all-nighters and kept on ticking.  I plowed through my BA and MS this way.  I loved people who spent too many nights in an ER or nursing home.  I can sit in a chair with the best of them.

Even so, we are tired!

On that old-body bandwagon is that we are jointy and creeky.  Raising littles after back surgery looks different from when you could throw the kids in the air without a care.  I broke my feet and have plantar fasciitis.  I’m not the runner I once was.

A benefit of age is that we are wiser and have perspective.  We know what will last and what needs attention.  We can laugh. This is a huge boon.  Things that seemed dire once are merely blips that we can ride out with grace.  Our vision is longer.  The concept of raising adults is not new, we have actual tangible evidence that they do grow up.  The first time around, it was theory, a hope.  This time, we have more assurance. 😊

A real zinger about raising kids in your fifties is that your kids talk about and pretend to have hot flashes way more than is normal!

Snow Day

It’s a snow day! I love the snow. The only reason why Iowa was on the list was for its snow.  Truth be told, it hasn’t quite measured up.  This is our third year, and I don’t think we are expecting anything spectacular.  Since I have a hero husband and two grown kids commuting in the weather, I’m not as heartbroken as I could be.

We raised our first two kids in snow, living for five years at an elevation of over 5000 ft with snow, glorious snow, filling our winter months.  I will always remember looking out the window at just the right moment to watch an evergreen timber silently from the neighbor’s yard over our fence.  It was awe-inspiring.

Either way, here we are, on a snowy-more-icy day with the girls playing with the neighbors.  These are the good old days.

Do Prisons Feed You?

Over lunch today my middlest announced she was going to be a missionary.  She plans to travel the world to tell people about Jesus and get imprisoned for it.  She wants to be sure to bring paper and pencils so she can write to people about God’s love and hopes that those delivering the messages won’t ruin them.

Not to be outdone, my seven-year-old interjected.  She says she will do everything the same except pack food so she doesn’t starve.  This gave our middlest—the one most likely to finish her meals—pause.  She looked at me intently.

“Do prisons feed you?”  I said that in the US they do.  Impressively, her eyes grew bigger.

“OK! We WILL need to pack some food, then!  Ramen, potatoes, and spaghetti!”

Grief

Grief is a horrible honor. The horror is pretty evident and requires little explanation.  To live without someone who filled the space in your life and heart is agony.  The honor may be more mysterious but beats steadily beneath the keening. I got to know wonderful people who decided to fill my life and heart with themselves.  I would choose to miss them over never having known them.  I outrightly pity those who can’t grieve the people I’ve lost because they never got to know them.

I have been ‘honored’ several times now.  I lost my dad’s mom when I was 14.  We lost a baby we named Alex before birth.  Then my mom’s mom died when my son was 7 months old.  That was hard and I actively miss her each day.  We lived with her for over five years, and she was like a second mom to me.  My son is named after her.  While my kids never knew her, they all know about her.  I keep her alive with stories, photos, and furniture. 

After that my cousin was brutally murdered and his killer has never been found.  I pray for his parents and brother all the time because I know grief never leaves.

The next ‘honor’ that changed my life was when my big sister died just before her 45^th birthday.  We are coming up on the 10^th anniversary of her passing.  I hate it. I positively, 100%, hate living without her in the world.  It’s wrong and definitively grievous. My life has changed so drastically since she left, and I don’t know how to process that I have lived in homes and loved children without her.  It’s anathema.

Her loss initiated a string of more losses, starting with her husband who followed her 19 months later. We also lost our first foster daughter whom we had hoped to adopt.  She is alive but lost to us. Her leaving changed our family.  My children are markedly scarred, and my husband and I cannot make it better.

So, I know grief.  I know the waves that hit from nowhere.  I know the anniversaries that loom large and fill me with dread.  I know how some anniversaries shock me with how mildly they pass.  And other instances when there is no perceivable reason, but I am laid flat.  I know the sweet remembrances, the tortuous what-ifs, and the ridiculous deals I make with myself or God.  I know the sense of isolation and the wondering how everyone else seems so very fine today while I sit having to will each painful breath into my lungs.

I also know that God wastes nothing.  My grief matters—and so does yours. I know He sees and feels it all with us. Every tear is captured in a bottle, and there is a promise that one day every tear will be dried.  All grief will be gone.  This pain is temporary, but still not a waste.  Not merely something to be endured. 

One good thing is that my experiences help me love my three little girls effectively.  In fact, they help me love my whole family meaningfully. Further? They help me love everyone I encounter.  I am more compassionate since experiencing loss.  I know what I can and cannot fix.  I know that there are times when the best thing to do is sit—like Job’s friends BEFORE they opened their big dumb mouths.  Sometimes, we are called to merely witness.  We don’t always have to do; sometimes we need to be still and abide without words or actions and witness the horrible honor of grief.

To Intervene or Not to Intervene—The Daily Parenting Question

What do you do when you hear the kids ramping up for either a good old-fashioned fight or a too-much-fun hullabaloo?  The former usually ends with broken things and angry kids.  The latter usually ends with broken kids and angry parents. 

I have a few standard responses.  I holler from the bottom of the stairs, or I might march to the playroom and ask, “What’s going on?” If I’m yelling from the other room, I get the same volume answer: “Nothing!” If I’m in the same room, I am blessed with wide-eyed innocent faces coupled with the same answer.

Another common response I give is cautionary or corrective words. “Be sweet!” “Calm down, please!” To this, the kids might yell that they are being sweet or calming with zero discernable change in behavior. Or they may take the opportunity to highlight someone else’s misbehavior.

We still end up with something getting broken and someone getting angry. Well, I have discovered a new tactic that is—so far—working like magic. Are you ready for my brilliance?

Now when I hear muffled or maniacal laughter or an escalating argument I say, with a smile in my voice, “Do you need my help?” Oh, folks!  This is a game-changer in my house!

First, this builds our golden goal of attachment because my offer is a desirable thing; I am coming to help rather than correct or scold.  It’s good for all of us to remember that.

Second, the girls can conduct a self-assessment and decide if an adult is needed. This pause in their activity seems to be enough to regulate their bodies.

Third, I think there is a surprise psychological component to this tactic. I imagine sets of eyes meeting across the room, and the prisoner’s dilemma comes to life. I’m approximately half-joking about that.

The girls have asked for help and have declined my offer with this tactic, and both ways qualify as a win.  When I go to help, we are all unified in seeking a solution rather than blaming or feeling shame.  If I don’t help, I hear the narration of them working out the issue and I am so proud of them gaining negotiating and peace-making skills.

How do you de-escalate kids getting too rowdy? How successful is it?

Parenting Kids at Age 25, 23, 9, 7, and 3

I think I am in a special parenting situation. Our oldest is 25 and our youngest is three—though she will be four by the time this is published.  While there are families with that age range, there are usually more kids evenly distributed between the oldest and youngest. 

When there is a big gap like we have—our second born is 14 years older than our ‘middlest’ kid—it is most often because the parents have regrouped to start second families with new spouses.

But here I am, with the same man, parenting five kids in a 21-year range.  My husband and I have been seen as the grandparents to the littles with our adult kids assumed to be the parents. When I go out with my four daughters, people ask my oldest how old the younger girls are, thinking they are deferring to the mom.  It is fun when they hear the baby call me mommy.

Combinations of parenting duties highlight our unique situation.  I potty train and meet boyfriends.  I have girls’ night out with my friends and oldest daughter, but speak in code to evade my younger girls’ comprehension. I watch Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, Superhero movies, Call the Midwife, and Reacher. 

I stay up late to connect with my oldest kids—ask me about the midnight questions!  Then I am up at 2:00 because of night terrors. Then I need to get up as usual because the early riser won’t be delayed. 

I talk about what sound letters make, drill kids in addition facts, review the Gospel, discuss the pedagogy practices of English Language Learning middle schoolers, and listen to stories about spays and anal gland expressions all in an average day.

I have to keep three rapidly growing girls clothed in the right size; sometimes that seems like a job all on its own.  I also listen to my adult daughter lament the trials of budgeting and eating healthy when grocery prices keep climbing.  At the same time, we are helping our son get into a position to move out despite the low wages people in education are paid.

I love my life. I like participating in disparate stages of life simultaneously.  It adds layers and enriches everything. I know each stage will end because it’s right there in front of me in the life of another child of mine.

Living this way also accentuates what does last.  Trials will always be around—the type of trial may change, but they all have stressors and challenges.  The trials—even the ones I know are more trivial—break my heart.  I’m pulling for my kids, praying daily for them to choose Jesus, to persevere, to trust, to stand up, and to choose well.

I don’t need to follow celebrities or sports.  I just fangirl over my husband and kids. That leaves my heart as full as my hands!

Time—Rich and Poor.

I was talking with a precious friend the other day.  She was struggling with time.  She is in the proverbial sandwich stage of life—caring for an aging parent, parenting her children, and providing care for her youngest grandchild.  You don’t have to add that she has a flourishing home business to imagine why she would struggle with time.  There is never enough.

As I listened, I felt like she’d been peeking into my home and brain. She kept saying the same things I’d been thinking for weeks. We both felt drained and in desperate need of a break that we couldn’t see coming. We needed more hours in the day…and the night. At the same time, she (and I) confessed in frustration over frittered time.  We would realize only after the fact that we had wasted a whole uninterrupted 30 minutes on garbage.

Then, like a flash of lightning illuminating the landscape (that’s a line from a play I did in Junior High that I can’t forget), this allegorical vision came to me. Rich people and poor people spend money differently. There are things one group would not likely purchase that the other would.  Poor people won’t buy a top-of-the-line vehicle. Rich people are not going to buy lottery tickets. Rich people invest in things that would grow their wealth. And the kicker is that the junk poor people purchase wastes what little money they have, actually perpetuating their deficits.

In the same way, a time-rich person might commit to large blocks of time to accomplish a task. They are also free to luxuriate in lengthy leisure activities.  Time-poor people can’t imagine pampering themselves or lingering over coffee with a friend. 

I am in a time-poor season.  I stay up late to talk with that precious friend once a week.  She is important to me.  But I cannot talk with her during the day. I am constantly interrupted and can’t finish a thought during the day. I get so frustrated because I don’t have time to sit, to think, or to finish anything!

But!  Here’s the rub.  I spend my time the way a poor person might spend money.  On those gumball machine toys and lottery tickets.  I buy trash with my time.  I get on social media.  When I realize that I just scrolled for 45 minutes, I am astonished and chagrinned. How did that happen?  I know I get on because there is no commitment.  I can spend 2 minutes checking notifications.  I can stop in an instant when a new demand comes collecting. It feels ‘safer’ than trying to read a book or start a project. But what a waste!

This realization was profound for me.  I told anyone who would listen. I didn’t know quite what to do with it, but I was convinced that the way I spent my time was robbing myself.  I needed to think like a rich person and make wiser purchases that focused on quality even when I can’t have quantity. I needed to invest rather than indulge in trash.

I haven't figured out how to do this exactly, but I am working diligently to cut waste and to treat my time as something I have control over and must steward wisely.

Are you time-rich or time-poor right now? Does the season affect how you spend time? Does this analogy ring true for you?