Other people's kids

Since I am trying to become an educator, I do my best to have patience with all children that I come into contact with.

Even MY kids.

I try to see the best in all of them, and treat them accordingly.

That being said, there are some kids that I'd like to smack upside the head. Especially the one's who are jerks to my kids.

Not that my kids are angels all the time. Oh no, I have lost track of the amount of times that one or more of my kids have done something cringe-worthy or made me just /facepalm.

And before I plunge headlong into this rant, let me first say that I know part of this is due to the fact that I don't know other people's kids as well as they do, so therefore their behavior could be completely normal for them, or due to some other unknown factor.

The tween diva is in 4th grade. While I know things have changed since "my day" in elementary school, I was wholly unprepared for the selfishness, the cliquishness, the pettiness, and the all out "Mean Girls" attitude that I have seen from some of the kids whom she's gone to school with over the last 4 1/2 years.

She's been in two different schools in the same town. She knew almost next to no one from preschool who went to her 1st school. She made a few friends, but she's had the unfortunate honor of losing friends at the end of every year, due to them moving, just switching schools, or HER switching schools. As such, finding new friends has been difficult. Before this year, I could count on one hand the amount of times she'd been invited to playdates, parties and sleepovers - in 3 years. Between K -2 grade, she came home more often than not, crying over how someone wasn't her friend anymore or how someone said something really mean to her. Now, she also has quite a few social issues. She's socially immature for her age, and as such, can take things to the extreme. But, even I can't explain some of these things away with that issue.

As her current teacher put it, my daughter is just "on a different wavelength" than most of the other kids her age. She has speech, reading, writing, and social issues. But, she's not cognitively impaired. She has the dubious honor of being one of the first kids in her class to need a bra, and she's also one of the tallest kids in her class. Her shoe size is just two 1/2 sizes away from my own. I said she was 10, right? Yeah, you can see how this might become a problem.

With the exception of a few kids, she's treated like a virtual pariah by the rest of the entire grade. She'll come home and tell me about how some kid on the bus told her than he didn't want her sitting by him because she was weird. She was told the other day that using her finger to help her keep her place while she was reading was dumb, and it was bugging someone. She's been told (at a birthday party no less) that the reason why a particular girl was being mean was because "I never told you I liked you, so why should I be nice to you."

WTH??? Where are these kids getting their lack of social graces?? I know that kids have differences in likes/dislikes etc., and I know that every kid is not going to get along with everyone else. I've tried to explain this to her, and she understands that even though someone isn't her best friend, that doesn't mean there's something wrong with her.

Of course, try getting a sobbing 10 year old to grasp this when she's being called names for still liking Disney Princesses.

And the worst part is, while I want my child to grow up and mature like the rest of her peers, I don't want it to be because of peer pressure. It's a fine line parents walk when it comes to what they expose their children to: do we try to keep them at a lower level of maturity in order to avoid the questions we're not sure we want to address? Or do we assume that eventually they'll grow up so why not treat them as such now?

Since the tween is our oldest, I have no model to look back to, to make sure I'm doing the right thing. Both hubs & I are firstborn, and as such we were also our parents' guinea pigs. There are many times when I feel like I've failed her, in many different areas.

And the idiocy of other people's kids aren't helping matters.

Like nails on a chalkboard

I consider myself to be a pretty tolerant person. I don't hate any one group of people, or really any one group of anything. I may not love it, or understand it, but I don't hate it.

With the exception of the sound of people chewing food. Loudly.

I love most things about my husband. Even the things that I don't particularly favor, I can handle, because I love him. And I KNOW there are things about me that drive him up the wall. That's what a relationship is about: finding a balance.

That being said, there are times when I could just scream at him,"Will you PLEASE stop chewing your food like a g*ddamn cow???"

People are loud and noisy. It's just part of being a walking, talking, sentient being. We fart, we burp, we laugh, we cough, we cry, we blow raspberries on other people's stomachs. Some of these noises are pleasant, some are not, but necessary so we don't explode or die from our lungs filling up with phlegm.

So, when I'm sitting at the table, trying to read or study or even surf the Internet, and it's quiet..and peaceful..and my husband sits down with a bowl of something, and proceeds to chew it so loudly, I'm surprised our sleeping children aren't awakened by the jackhammering that his mouth is doing, needless to say I can get a little irritated.

And he wonders why I always have my earbuds in.

It's not like my ears are that sensitive or that he's extremely loud. I think it's just one of those things where it REALLY bugs me. Like bad drivers, or whiny children.

Come to think of it, a lot of shit bugs me.

Do I smell bad?

Friends.

I used to have them.

But, somewhere along the journey of marriage, 3 kids & moving cross country, they seem to have disappeared.

I have people I know pretty well, acquaintances, co-workers I get along with, classmates I see outside of the classroom and wave to.

But, friends? Not so much.

I can count on 1 hand the number of people I can say are my honest-to-goodness friends.

And none of them live in this state.

One I haven't seen since my mom's funeral, 2 years ago. The other I see once, maybe twice a year.

I suppose, if we had decided to stay in the po-dunk little town we went to high school in, like apparently everyone else we went to school with did, maybe I'd have some people to hang out with every once in awhile.

Normally this kind of shit doesn't bother me, because, well, I really have no life. I get up, I cook, I wipe butts, I clean, I go to bed. That's the gist of my day. But everyone once in awhile, I get a bug up my ass, something stuck in my craw, sand in my vagina, whatever phrase you want to use, and I get a tad bit pissed over the situation.

Like tonight. The hubs is out at a bar, with a co-worker. He's been gone for 4 hours. He'll likely be gone for another. Once again, I dealt with the end of dinner, and the whole bedtime routine with two extremely cranky children all by myself. He went out earlier this week, and did the same thing. He goes out every week for dinner & drinks with his geek buddies.

I have no one to go out with, no one to do anything with.

And this is not for lack of trying. But, something that I've come to notice about small towns is, once someone has a circle of friends, it seems almost impossible to break into it. We've lived here for almost 6 years. I've never had a girl's night out, my kids rarely are invited for playdates (although I have hosted quite a few), and the few people I can call the closest thing to a friend have almost NOTHING in common with me. They don't like the same music or movies, or they have completely different hobbies.

Not that I'm judgmental in any way. I'm open to pretty much everything. We're close friends with a couple who are baby-wearing, organic food buyin', compost makin', God-fearin' Conservative hippies. We're also close friends with a guy who is a gay Atheist. Like I said, completely not judgmental. It takes all kinds, and far be it for me say only certain types of people can be my friend.

Then, to add insult to the friend-less injury, I couldn't even find a damn friend to go with me to a concert in October.

Seriously??

I asked everyone I knew, no one was interest. It's not like I asked them to go to the opening of a porn movie. It's a damn concert. Are my interests and tastes THAT extreme that no one would even consider it? I was even willing to buy the damn ticket for them. The hubs was willing to go, but the ticket cost a hell of a lot less than a sitter for 6 hours, so we decided he would stay home and watch the kids.

The hubs has tried to help me. He's tried SO hard to help me. Trying to get me and the wives of his co-workers together, hoping that we'll be friends. I've tried, but nothing sticks. It doesn't help that I'm a 30-something college student, who is constantly surrounded by 18-23 year olds. Like they WANT a friend who has kids & a mortgage. No, they'd rather go out every weekend and get completely trashed like any good red-blooded American college student. I'm too old for the college kids, and too young for the wives of my husband's peers. I'm stuck in the damn middle. It sucks, big time.

I think the problem is, I'm not young & stupid enough to try and mold myself to whatever people want me to be. Yeah, I'm married and have kids, but I still listen to loud music. I can cook a mean chile verde and damn I make good zucchini bread, but I love video games (me & our RockBand have a standing engagement). I'm too old for the skinny jeans but not quite ready for the elastic waist polyester knit pants.

I'm in the no-man's land of womanhood.

Comparisons

I always thought, before having children, that I would be above comparing any children I had to their peers. I had always hated it when it was done to me, and I didn't like doing it to myself.

But, that being said, I was a self-conscious teenager, so it inevitably happened.

After having our oldest, we didn't know many other people with small children. We had gotten married young, had a child young. Of the people we knew from high school, we were the only ones who'd had a kid. Her first year was relatively calm, even though she suffered from a lot of health issues, mainly ear infections.

As she got a little older, I started noticing differences. Mainly if the fact that, while she could babble incessantly, hearing actual, intelligible words from her was rare. By the time she was 2, she had been diagnosed with a major speech delay and she started therapy.

I didn't give it much thought, as I figured it was a temporary issue, and as she grew older, she speech would progress and she would be "normal".

I've since come to loathe that word.

We made a few friends in our military housing complex, including 1 family who had a little boy only 2 days younger than our oldest. By the time this kid was 2 years old, he was potty trained, could speak in full sentences, knew most of his letters, and all his colors. We were still trying to coax our daughter into saying "mommy" without resorting to food rewards.

Needless to say, the comparisons started. And not just with this kid. We went to church back then, and I was constantly bombarded by the fact that our child just wasn't on par with her peers. I tried not to let it get to me, but the fact that this was our first child, and even though I had no other basis for comparison other than these children, did not help matters.

Fast forward a few years. We're pregnant with our second child, another daughter. When she was born, I knew something was different. No one said anything to me about it, so I chalked it up to hormones and tried to let it go. Only, there WAS something different. She was diagnosed with Down syndrome when she was a newborn. Another blow to my quest for a "normal" child. I couldn't even stop myself from trying to compare her to her peers. It was pointless, but on the inside I still did. I knew that there were plenty of examples of adults with special needs who blew away expectations. The so-called "Superstars" of the developmentally delayed. I wished I could say that I knew our daughter would be like that, but to be honest (and that's the whole damn point of this thing) I knew that, considering our track record, it probably wouldn't happen.

When the oldest started school, I knew she was already delayed. I remember distinctly trying to force her to memorize the alphabet in the weeks before Kindergarden started. The only letter she could successfully identify was "X". Don't ask me why, that's the only one she knew. She knew how to write her name, although she though the "A" in her name was a "Q" when she would try to type it on the computer. By the time 2nd grade rolled around, she was getting help in the Resource Room and I was asking for an evaluation for a Learning Disability. She didn't have one, and I had to admit to myself that I had been hoping she would. Not because I wanted her to have another issue to deal with, but because it would have been some sort of answer. Now we had no other reason for the fact that she didn't seem to be able to read at grade level, and had other scholastic issues, so I was forced to internalize her faults as my own.

My fault, I didn't work with her enough, I didn't push her hard enough, I let her watch too much TV, I should have been trying to work with her from an earlier age.

Typical parental angst, I know.

Now, thankfully, she doesn't need to be in the Resource Room anymore; she's still in speech, has some social problems that we're working through, and we threw a wrench in the works by switching her schools last year. We put her in a summer day camp this summer to try & help her make some new friends. She did, which has been awesome. It's been a relief, a break from the near constant routine of her coming home from school over the past few years, nearly in tears, saying she had a really bad day because of a misunderstanding on her part over some elementary school social hierarchy. If someone didn't want to play with her constantly, she assumed they no longer wanted to be her friend.

Like I said, she had some social issues to work on.

She's made really good friends with one particular girl, who wasn't in her class this last year, but hopefully she will be this upcoming year. We invited said girl over a sleepover last weekend.

Needless to say, we kinda got our eyes opened to what level her peers are at. This little girl is reading young adult, multi-chapter books, by herself. She has the vocabulary of a kid about 2 years older than her. She is able to have a conversation with an adult that doesn't somehow revolve around a movie that she's comparing things to. She has a tutor, which I'm sure helps. But the intent is there. Our daughter doesn't seem to WANT to read, or learn, she just does it because it's expected of her.

I know my daughter is smart. She's an amazing artist, has a wry sense of humor, and is a fierce friend. I know all children don't learn the same way. She's definitely a visual learner. I know I shouldn't compare apples to oranges.

All this really goes back to my guilt. Maybe we shouldn't have had 3 kids, then maybe I would have had more time to focus on her needs. Maybe we shouldn't have moved so far away from family, so we could have some help, thus allowing more time to focus on her. Maybe I should quit college, and stop working (even though it's part-time) so I'll have more time and energy to focus on her. Maybe I should quit being so selfish and demanding I have "me time" and turn into the stereotypical "martyr mom", putting everyone else's needs/wants before any of mine.

Oh wait, I HAVE been doing that, for quite a while, and look where it got me.

Sure it sucks, to see my children have to struggle for things that it seems most other kids either have naturally or who are able to get after only a little bit of work. Hell, my 5 year old struggles with not dumping her plate of food all over the ground at nearly every meal. How the hell am I supposed to expect her to be potty trained and be able to recite her ABC's?

Every day I have to re-evaluate my definition of "normal", I have to rewrite my expectations, of my children and myself. My children are going to be who they will be, regardless of how much I worry and stress over it, so all I can do is just be the best mom I know how to be.

Of course, that's easier said than done.

Dreams

It seems that dreams, whether they be in real life or literary works, are the windows to the soul.

Or maybe that's the eyes, but I digress.

Everyone and their mom seems to be having extraordinary and realistic dreams that defy their wildest imaginations. These people wake up, after having some sort of prophetic vision, and suddenly their lives have meaning.

I should be so lucky.

I don't dream. Much. I remember being a young child and having extremely vivid dreams that would stay with me for years. I had one particular dream when I was about 7 or 8, of my best friend at the time and I being chased through Toys R Us by 2 male & 1 female vampires. They caught my friend at the top of one of those gawd awful skyscraper type aisles. Then I woke up screaming. I had this dream for years. I remember it to this day, 20-some odd years later.

I suppose it could probably be explained away by the fact that, as children, our imaginations are running rampant and subsequently our subconscious is way more active, culminating in crazy dreams.

Whatever.

I just would like to dream, and be able to remember it longer than 20 seconds after I wake up. I suppose that's the crux of the matter. I have dreams, every so often, but I can't remember shit about them. I would especially like to remember the sexy dreams. Double especially when they have some hot sexy actor who currently plays a cold, sparkly vampire.

Ahem

Another part of me wishes I would dream, so I would dream of my mother. My mom died almost 2 years ago, and I have never had a dream about her. Not once. I'm not a real religious person (I think I've been to church once in the last 5 years) but there have been times when I've actually prayed to have a dream about my mom. I think about my mom everyday, but I can't see her in my head, while I sleep.

I've had a few discussion with myself about this. Me and the voices in my head are tight. It could just be that my subconscious thinks I'm not ready emotionally for that. Losing my mom took a tremendously huge toll on my psyche. It was a long journey, and it was emotionally draining. Maybe I'll start dreaming of her when I've worked through all my issues. Which, seeing the list of issues that I've accumulated, might be awhile.

But, going more over to the religious side of things, I've contemplated that maybe it's because she's in Heaven. She resolved all her "business" before leaving this earth, and now is peacefully watching over my family & I, without having to creep into my sleeping head.

My only problem with that theory is, I need her. Again with the selfishness you're probably saying. Let the poor woman rest for eternity in peace without having to drag her back into the crappiness of life just because you need a mental hug! But that's just it. I am selfish, and I do need her. Especially with the fact that my only other parent seems to think it's perfectly acceptable to only call on birthdays and holidays, and even then he's either late or forgets and I have to call him.

I've thought about starting a dream journal and trying to keep it by the bed so that I can quickly jot down all those juicy details of my nighttime psyche before they drip out of my ear holes. But I have enough problems trying to haul my tired ass out of bed in the morning, even when I can hear little voices in the room across the hall yelling,"Moooooom, I pooooped!!!!" Being able to consciously grab a pen and coherently write down whatever weird, Freudian thoughts had been creeping around in my head all night sounds like way too much work, and quite possibly might provide no insight into my life at all. It would be just perfect to have a dream, and try to write it down, but have nothing be legible on the paper other than: I like cheese.

Talk about profound.

Technical issues

While, by the time I actually put this blog somewhere (because I've just been putting random thoughts in a text file every once in awhile when something strikes me), I will most likely have a name for it, at the moment I am stuck. The name I thought would be perfect is actually taken. And what's worse, they haven't updated their blog since 2006. WTF? I don't know if Blogger has some sort of time limit on domain names. I've contemplated just making an actual domain but, the truth is, I suck at code. And I don't want to have to ask for help with backgrounds and all that shit that I probably should have learned 10 years ago when I was first getting into blogging and the web in general. I consider it a small miracle that I can make text italicized, bold and strike thru without having to pull up any outside menus. Me & HTML don't get along all that well.

ETA: After speaking to a friend online, I figured out how to get around the fact that the actual name I wanted was taken. I hope to have a domain purchased and this blog up by the end of the weekend. Until then, Blogger's free and I have an itch to get my ramblings out there.