Avivah Werner

Category: Parenting

  • “Mommy, when will I die?”

    Yesterday I was sitting next to ds5 on the bus on our way home from our shopping trip, when he suddenly asked me: “Mommy, when will I die?”

    I looked at him and said, “When you were born, Hashem (God) gave you a neshama (soul) that has a special job.  You’re going to be alive as long as your neshama has a job to do, and hopefully that will be for a very long time.”

    He was satisfied with that answer and didn’t ask anything else.  But that jolted my thoughts.

    When Yirmiyahu was taken to the hospital and even more when I was told how he nearly didn’t make it, I was wracked with guilt.  I kept thinking over and over, ‘Just a few more hours, what if we hadn’t taken him then, why didn’t I take him sooner?  Why didn’t I pay more attention to my gut feeling that something was wrong?”   Over and over.  I kept thinking: ‘I have to let go of this, I did the best I could, I was far from negligent about the situation…’  But still my mind would start playing, ‘what if, what if, what if?’

    Then I heard those words come out of my mouth to answer ds5 and they gave me a burst of clarity: Yirmiyahu didn’t die, not because we got him to the emergency room on time.  He made it because his soul has a purpose and he needs to be here. That means that Hashem made sure he’d get there on time.  And if it hadn’t been us taking him for medical care, He would have sent another messenger to make sure that Yirmiyahu got the medical help he needed.  Because Yirmiyahu needs to be here, not just as the light of my life, but as part of God’s plan.

    I can’t tell you what a gift and relief this was, to have peace of mind and let go of this huge emotional weight on me.  I don’t know if I’ll ever  totally let go of that fear of ‘what if’ or wipe out every vestige of guilt that I didn’t do something differently.  But this reminded me that God and His plan aren’t part of the picture; they are the picture.

    Avivah

  • Appreciating what you have before it’s gone – but when it’s gone, trust that it will be back again

    A number of months ago, I was going to write a post about the importance of appreciating each day as it is, as imperfect as it is.  Because wherever you are today, however hard it seems, you don’t know what the next day holds.  It’s important to actively appreciate each day for all that is good, and appreciate all the bad that hasn’t happened.  Like that all your kids are in bed at night, and no one has broken an arm or had to go to the emergency room.  The day after I mentally wrote this, one of our children was taken to the emergency room, and I remember thinking how glad I was that I had focused on what I had before I didn’t have it.

    You don’t want hard times to be a wake up call that force you to see in retrospect that you missed out on enjoying the days you had because you were too busy looking at what was wrong.

    I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.  As much as I try to actively look for the good in each day, I can see so many things I didn’t appreciate.  I didn’t appreciate my baby’s wet diaper, him moving his limbs or having the strength to make sounds.  There are a lot of other things I didn’t appreciate until I didn’t have them.

    At the hospital, I asked a nurse who was sighing heavily what was wrong, and she told me that things were hard.  I asked her why, and she told me that she has to get ready for Pesach/Passover and that we women have hard lives.  I said to her, “I hear what you’re saying, but right now I’d be very happy to be at home getting ready for Pesach.”  Three weeks ago Pesach preparation seemed like something significant to deal with.  Now it’s hardly a minor blip to me.  I wasn’t preaching to her or saying her reality wasn’t valid, because of course it is. I was just sharing my perspective from my vantage point right now.

    Yesterday I was feeling overwhelmed about the sequence of events lately, like everything in my life was shattering all around me.  Thinking about all the things in my life that were good that I hadn’t appreciated enough made me feel even worse.  I wanted the reassurance that this was as bad as it was going to get, that I had hit rock bottom and the only place to go was up.  But if there were still good things left, I didn’t have that reassurance.

    I’ve watched my life and the lives of others spiral down very quickly, frighteningly quickly.  We want to feel like we’re in control of our lives and if we do the right things, life will proceed in a predictably pleasant way.  We don’t want to think that despite our best efforts, things can shift in the blink of an eye.  But today I was comforted when remembering this fact of life is two sided: it can always be worse, but it can also always be better.  And just as things can get bad very quickly, they can also change for the better in an instant.

    That thought gave me a lot of hope and perspective.

    Avivah

  • Update on Yirmiyahu’s Condition

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    Avivah asked me to post an update for those of you who are concerned. When Yirmiyahu was originally admitted to the hospital on Thursday, we did not realize how serious his condition was. The admitting doctor told Avivah a couple of days after he was admitted that his condition had been critical and if we had come in a few hours later he would not have made it.

    Needless to say, that is a very scary thought. Thank G-d we did get him to the doctor and hospital when we did.

    After five days, as of this afternoon Yirmy has been taken off all the lovely plug-ins that you see in the image and has been moved from the pediatric intensive care unit to the regular children’s wing of the hospital.  He is eating on his own, making eye contact, crying appropriately, sleeping well and even emitting some of his cute gurgles. He has not smiled yet and is still quite weak, so they are keeping him admitted for the time being. Avivah is with him in the hospital and I am holding down the fort here with my kids.

    That is the update until I speak to Avivah again.  She will probably ask me to add some details.

    Avivah’s DH

  • The value of tears of sadness

    In his Power to Parent series, Dr. Gordon Neufeld teaches about the significance of frustration.

    Frustration is an emotion you feel when something in your life isn’t working for you.  When faced with frustration, there are several ways that this can express itself.  The most healthy options are to 1) change the situation that frustrates you, or if you aren’t able to do something to change what is bothering you, to 2) accept that you can’t change the situation.  In order to accept the situation as it is, it requires feeling the futility of the situation, feeling the sadness of wanting something and not having it.  This is something that many of us find difficult because we have become defended from our emotions, meaning that we’ve hardened ourselves to a degree so as to not feel painful emotions, sadness about unmet desires being one of those painful feelings.

    What happens when a person becomes emotionally defended?  Since they don’t allow themselves to feel the sadness of the situation, when faced with frustration it manifests as aggression (towards himself or others).  Dr. Neufeld teaches about how to help a person who is emotionally hardened find what he calls ‘tears of futility’; this is necessary for them to constructively deal with tough emotions and grow emotionally.  He talks a lot about how to do this, and one possibility is to carefully touch on painful situations to bring them to tears.  These tears are a sign of adaptive behavior and get something that can turn foul out of our systems where it can’t harm us.

    Yesterday morning I was very anxious about Yirmiyahu being so sick, and as I started thinking about the possibility he’d need to be hospitalized began to tear up.  I don’t cry often, but this past week and a half I’ve had my share of tears.  I thought, “God, what do you want from me already?”  And suddenly it occurred to me, maybe He isn’t demanding something of me but giving me an opportunity.  Just as a loving parent may touch on painful topics in order to help a child experience his futility and grow, God is pushing me to find my tears.  Tears of futility (this can also be the feeling of sadness of futility without the tears) release tensions, help us come to peace about all that we are going through, and increase our emotional adaptability.

    Fully feeling our sadness is an important and powerful step in  breaking down the internal barrier that separates us from our deeper selves, from others, and from God – so this is my impetus to embrace rather than resist the discomfort of the challenges I’m feeling right now.

    It’s not fun but it’s good.

    Avivah

  • Intake appointment at Shalva

    I first heard about Shalva, a support program in Jerusalem for children with all kinds of delays and disabilities, in the early days of Yirmiyahu’s life.  However, I was quite busy with all that I had going on and it wasn’t until he was six months old that my headspace cleared out enough to consider taking him there for therapies on a regular basis.

    When I called to set up the intake appointment, we were given a date almost two months later, which was yesterday.  Part of what I wanted to determine was if it was even feasible for me to get there by the 9:30 am program starting time; the earliest bus leaving Karmiel headed for Jerusalem is 6 am and since it usually takes three hours to get to Jerusalem and then I need a connecting bus to the Har Nof neighborhood, I didn’t know if this was possible.  I’m happy to say that it only took me 3 hours and forty minutes to get there and I wasn’t rushing, so I’m reassured on this front.  It’s definitely a long day of traveling, but it will be worth it for Yirmiyahu to get support from providers with a lot of experience with babies with T21.  And it will be very nice for me to have a chance to speak to other parents of infants with T21, something I haven’t been able to do in person until yesterday (though I was just there for the intake and my time with other parents was limited, that was really, really nice for me).

    The facility is really wonderful; the immediate feeling is warm and relaxing.  The staff are all very welcoming.  It was nice being in an environment that was so American; the staff members I met were mostly Americans but everyone who works there speaks English (and Hebrew, obviously).  (Just being in Jerusalem is really different since you hear so much English everywhere you go; no one thinks about it or notices it, but here in Karmiel it’s uncommon!)

    A three member team did an assessment of Yirmiyahu and were extremely positive about him. I don’t have anyone to compare him to, and it’s interesting for me to hear feedback from those who work with children with T21.  Their responses were similar to those I got at his evaluation at the Feuerstein Institute – it’s unusual to see a baby with T21 like him.  Specifically they said his muscle tone is excellent, he has a sparkle in his eyes that they said they usually don’t see at this age, he is very active and communicative, and of course he’s exceedingly cute. 🙂

    This makes me wonder a lot.  But I’m going to post separately about my thoughts on this rather than get off topic here.

    After Pesach he’ll be able to begin at Shalva; they’re very full now so he will probably only be able to go once every other week rather than weekly to their ‘Me and my Mommy’ program.  When he’s there, he’ll be able to receive physical, occupational and speech therapy, and maybe also hydrotherapy though it seems this is available only to babies who attend weekly.  I asked when a slot opens up weekly for Yirmiyahu to receive it; hydrotherapy looks so fun!  They were concerned that it wouldn’t be realistic for me to come weekly because of the distance; I didn’t ask if anyone else comes from so far but from the reaction of all the staff and parents who heard where we were coming from, I assume it’s very unusual.  I don’t have anything comparable locally so the choice is for him not to get anything more than what he’s currently getting, which isn’t okay with me.

    I’m not looking forward to the traveling, but I am looking forward to Yirmiyahu getting more help in such a warm and supportive environment!

    Avivah

  • Things we do to help our baby with T21 thrive

    When Yirmiyahu was about six weeks old, I found time to call a couple of people with older children with T21.  Both of them warmly congratulated me and when I asked about what they found helpful for their child, told me the most important thing was to love him.  I understand the importance of this advice – too much time is often spent mourning the diagnosis instead of falling in love with the special baby that we were gifted with – but at the same time, I wanted concrete information.

    I loved Yirmiyahu before he was born and didn’t have any ambivalence when I learned about him having T21; what I wanted to hear was what could I do to help him moderate the difficulties that come along with his diagnosis.  I got almost no suggestions to this question other than take him to therapy.

    Not long ago, I shared what we’ve done with a mother in Australia who wanted to know what she could do to help her baby with T21.  Since I started researching this when Yirmiyahu was 2 days old (thanks to being moved to a hospital room where I could access the wifi!), I was fortunate to gain a lot of information early on.  Some of the things we do are based on reading done since his birth, others are things that we implemented based on my prior knowledge of nutrition or child development.  Almost all of these suggestions would be helpful for a typical baby, too.

    Nutrition:

    1) Breastfeeding – this is very important for every baby, and a baby who is born nutritionally depleted (as those with T21 are, regardless of the health of his mother) benefit even more.  I’m grateful that for the first ten weeks Yirmiyahu got exclusively my milk (though we then began supplementing since we had challenges with weight gain); my plan had been to continue in this way long term but unfortunately things didn’t work out that way.  Our main health issues have come from introducing formula and if he was exclusively nursing we could have bypassed a lot of this.

    2) Nutrivene-D vitamin supplement – individuals with T21 have an extra chromosome in every cell of their bodies, which means that there is 50 percent more metabolites; this creates a situation called ‘gene overexpression’.   There are ways to treat this overexpression; I think of it as adding vitamins so that he has the same proportion as those without the extra chromosome.  There are those who say this is unproven and a waste of money; there’s nothing in my research that leads me to think this is an unnecessary or unimportant addition to his daily diet.  Yirmiyahu gets a half teaspoon daily, split between two bottles.  The taste supposedly is unpleasant but we haven’t had any problem with him drinking it along with his formula.  (Here’s an article that covers some of the relevant biochemical issues.)

    3) Edited to add – I have since learned that cod liver oil is not recommended for children with T21! Fermented cod liver oil and butter oil – these work synergistically together, and he gets 1/4 t. of each daily.  I emailed the Green Pasture company to find out how much DHA was in each teaspoon, and they sent me the following information:

    Each teaspoon of fermented cod liver oil contains:

    • 1825 IU vitamin A
    • 427 IU vitamin D
    • 150 mg EPA
    • 90 mg DHA

    What I especially like about both of these oils is that they are food sources of these nutrients, not artificially boosted, so the body absorbs them more completely.  These are beneficial in many ways, but a main concern of mine in addition to supporting cognition is improving bone health – individuals with T21 have underdeveloped facial bones, which I believe is connected to their nutritionally depleted status.  Adele Davis wrote about underdeveloped facial bones and their connection to nutrition many years ago.

    4) Probiotics – about 9 billion cfu daily – I mix this into one of his bottles along with the Nutrivene.  Yirmiyahu was born with transient leukemia and in his first days of life had very high dosage antibiotics administered to bring his white blood cell count down to the normal range. I began giving this at six days old via his feeding tube (I mixed it with the milk I expressed); probiotics were critical to rebuilding his digestive flora, but are very important for everyone.  Gut health is at the root of all health.

    5) Baby GAPS protocol – we’re beginning to introduce other foods using the baby GAPS protocol.  This begins with meat broth, gradually building up quantities and adding in blended vegetables, meat, chicken, etc.  I plan to add a little bit of juice from our homemade kimchi into his bottle of broth in place of the recommended yogurt.  Since individuals with T21 are almost always sensitive to gluten and casein, as he gets older I intend to keep him on a gluten free, casein free diet.

    Physical/cognitive development– physical development leads to cognitive improvements, and cognitive improvements lead to physical development, so I can’t separate this into two separate categories.

    1) Crawling track – we keep him on his stomach as much as possible, though not nearly as much as recommended by Glenn Doman.  He doesn’t like being on the inclined track for long with his head downward, but we’ve found he loves being on it with his head positioned upward and can stay there for a while in this position.  I attribute his strong muscle development mainly to the time he’s spent on his stomach.  Last week his physical therapist, who usually doesn’t make any comments about his development, told me she was impressed by how well he was holding certain positions.  She has a traditional perspective on physical therapy which sometimes contradicts the neurodevelopmental approach (eg doesn’t see tummy time or crawling as important, just sitting and standing), but rather than disagree I go on doing what I’m doing and let her by surprised when he’s doing so much better than she expects.  🙂

    2) Balance exercises – we lift him up and down ten times, several times a day, and from side to side ten times a few times a day.  DH also does a swinging set of exercises with him.  All of these are according to the Doman suggestions, though as with everything, I don’t do anything as much as he recommends.  These are really fun and Yirmiyahu loves them, and I appreciate things that are easily and naturally integrated into life that don’t feel therapeutic but are beneficial.

    3) Grasping exercise – this begins with having a baby grasp your finger when put into his palm, and then continue until he can support his weight fully when holding on to your thumbs.  When Yirmiyahu was born he had very low muscle tone, and the instinctive reflex to grasp something was totally missing; to expect him to independently support his weight by holding on to something seemed wildly unrealistic for him.

    But we kept encouraging him every day to grasp our fingers and when he did, bit by bit would slightly pull our finger away to encourage a firmer grasp.  Now he can pull himself up from a laying position while holding on to my thumbs; several people have recently commented on how strong he is when they gave him a hand and he began to pull himself up!

    4) Baby wearing – I usually wear Yirmiyahu in a wrap when I go out.  This is great for his vestibular system and also good for his cognition, as he experiences the world more actively than if he were lying in the stroller.

    5) Cross patterning – these are exercises that are done to strengthen the connection between the right and left hemispheres of the brain. We recently began doing this once or twice a day; three of us manually do these exercises with him by moving his arms, legs and head in the rhythmic, alternate motion that is used in cross-crawling.  I have mixed feelings about this because Yirmiyahu hates it.  Right now we only do a couple minutes at a session.  I’m considering changing this to a two person team, moving just his arms and legs; maybe he’ll do better with this.  I’d like to build up to five minutes twice a day. (Update: we tried patterning with two people, and it’s much, much better!  He usually smiles or looks content for most of the time; when he starts to cry we stop right away.  Now that it’s so much more pleasant for him, I don’t feel ambivalent anymore, and I think within a day we should be able to build up to ten minutes a day, broken up into several short sessions.)

    6) Oral motor exercises – I do these sporadically with Yirmiyahu; these are exercises to help increase his oral motor awareness and strength.  It would be good if I were more regular, but I got off track when ds14 was hospitalized.  I plan to be more consistent about this as he begins solids.

    7) Deep pressure exercises – I began doing deep pressure with Yirmiyahu when he was four days old and in the NICU.  I began with squeezing each part of his hand and arm slowly and deeply, to help him build awareness of his limbs; when he got out of the NICU I could touch more parts of his body so I then moved on to doing it on his legs and feet.  I try to do this at least twice a day, and coordinate it with diaper changes.

    8) Massage – I massage Yirmiyahu about once a day, usually at the time of a diaper change.  Massage benefits muscle tone and motor functioning.  Here’s a paper about the benefits of massage for children with T21.  He also gets a professional massage once a week at his visit to the naturopath.

    9) Music – music benefits the brain and also prepares a baby for speech, by improving his auditory tonal processing.  We play classical music almost every day, usually Mozart but I like Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and Rossini is my favorite classical composer so they also get regular airtime in our home.

    10) Books – Jim Trelease writes in the Read Aloud Handbook about parents of an infant with T21 who constantly played audio recordings of books; he met them when the girl was beginning college.  Hearing lots of language is stimulating, particularly books with patterns (eg ryhmes).  When I read with the littles, if Yirmiyahu is awake he sits on my lap to listen.  We also just started accessing audiobooks from our library in the US (very exciting!) so now we often have stories being read aloud.  When reading with just him I keep the words very simple, just pointing at something and clearly telling him the name of it.  This is something I’d like to do a lot more of but I don’t have the materials or time to create them, so I work with what I have and it will have to be enough.

    11) Alternative health therapies – I take Yirmiyahu to a naturopath every week who does craniosacral work, reflexology and massage with him.  I love taking him because he LOVES this!  He has the look of a little prince as he languidly stretches out and enjoys it all.   The craniosacral work is particularly important to keep the bones of the head and face in alignment.

    This is a bit of a complex topic but one thing I’m hoping is that this will help expand his palate, which is very high and narrow, which affects the pituitary gland which in turn affects growth.  (Most kids with T21 are smaller than their same age counterparts.)  More active plans for expanding his palate will wait until he’s older though this is something I began thinking about within the first hour of learning he had T21.

    Yirmiyahu also has lots of older siblings who play and talk with him plenty, so he gets lots of love and attention!  We repeat sounds that he makes back to him, and try to clearly articulate sounds and exaggerate the shape of our mouths to make it easier for him to imitate.  We try to be sure whenever he’s awake that he has some kind of stimulation but in the same integrated way that you would treat any baby.  I feel it’s very important that it doesn’t feel to him or everyone around him that everything is therapy, since it reinforces the disability label and mindset.

    I have an intake appointment at Shalva in Jerusalem at the end of February, and once they have a slot for us hope to take Yirmiyahu once a week for a morning of therapies – speech, physical and occupational- he’s only getting physical therapy right now.  We’re on the waiting list at the Feuerstein Institute in Jerusalem and we’ll see how to manage that once we get to the top of their list!

    There are neurodevelopmental programs that take six to eight hours a day, but I can’t do anything like that without neglecting everyone else in our family.  And I honestly don’t want to do a program like that because it feels imbalanced to me (not to say that it’s imbalanced for others; if they can do it and stay sane, that’s fantastic!).

    Yirmiyahu is just one member of our family, and him having T21 doesn’t make everyone else’s needs disappear.  So I do what I can in ways that I can fit it into our day.  Something that was really helpful about getting the positive feedback at the evaluation at the Feuerstein Institute, when they told me that he’s on a very different level than most babies with T21 that they see, is that it helped me let go of the feeling that I’m failing him by not doing more for him and instead feel positively about what I am doing.

    Avivah

  • Sexual predators and the grooming process

    In light of the news about the conviction and yesterday’s sentencing of a high profile case of a child molester, I’d like to share some thoughts on the general topic.  Not specific to this warped individual, who thankfully will now be put away where he can’t hurt anyone else (sorry to pique your interest if you don’t know what I’m talking about, but I prefer to stay away from discussing individuals), but about some general important aspects to understand about child molestation that were clearly evident in this case.

    For years when I heard about sexual molestation within religious communities with strong modesty guidelines, I often wondered how this was possible.  After all, it would seem that children who are raised with an understanding that the body is private and has been taught to maintain clear boundaries between men and women wouldn’t be easy targets for predators.  It was after I learned about the grooming process and the way that sexual predators position themselves that I was able to understand this.

    This was very disturbing information to me, but it’s so critically important for parents to understand about this, because this knowledge can help us to protect our kids.  Molestation and abuse are unfortunately realities in every community, and I’ve written in the past about the importance of speaking to our children about personal space.  When I’ve spoken about different aspects of this topic with people in person, in almost every situation I’ve been met with skepticism or disbelief about the reality of molestation and abuse within the Jewish world.

    I understand how hard it is to emotionally accept that people who look like upstanding members of a community – or even just average looking people – would act in such a degenerate and evil way.  That’s why it’s so important to at least somewhat understand the mentality of molesters.  The development of a trustworthy persona is calculated and purposeful, to position themselves as upstanding individuals above reproach.  Once people view them in a positive light,  it will be very hard for people to believe accusations of abuse against the predators – and molesters use this psychological phenomenon known as the halo effect along with cognitive dissonance to their advantage.  (Read here for a detailed story of how this played out with a well-known sports coach.)

    Predators are constantly scanning for targets.  They are looking for the weakest and least confident children, those who are troubled, come from difficult home situations, or whose parents are busy and not very available.  The most emotionally vulnerable families and children are the least likely to protest wrong doing, and the predator also knows that if a victim does speak up, they won’t be believed because of their social status.  It’s an amazing strategy, really – pick someone who is emotionally suffering, then when they try to tell the truth about what is happening to them, claim that because of their emotional suffering, they can’t be trusted.

    Once they target the victims, they then begin the grooming process.   The abuse doesn’t always begin immediately – the predator softens their defenses and continually tests their boundaries.  Even if you don’t usually follow links, please read this one as well as the article above to understand why and how this works.

    I’m warning you that this is difficult stuff to read about.  But you need to understand this, and realize that talking to your kids about respecting physical boundaries isn’t enough.

    We must be actively involved in our children’s lives.  You don’t want them to feel there’s no one at home for them to talk to, that you’re too busy for them – that leaves the door wide open for someone else to walk in and fill that need.  One goal is that a child will feel able to tell us about what happens in their lives, even the unpleasant things.  How would you react if your child came home and said he had been fondled?  Would you get angry at him?  Tell him it’s not possible, he must have misunderstood?  That he brought it on himself by doing something?  Would he know that you’d believe him and support him?  I’ve read so many horrible stories in which parents refused to believe the child – if a child tells you something, don’t downplay it or ignore it.  There’s no one else who’s going to help them if you can’t or won’t, and then the predator has free reign.

    Even if you have spoken to your kids about appropriate touch and have a good relationship with them, you still need to keep an eye on them.  I see lots of kids locally who have minimal supervision from a young age.  I’ve been really concerned when I’m in a park and see a large number of children playing and relatively few parents there to supervise.  Who is watching the kids?  Kids need supervision.  It’s not possible to supervise every child at every minute, but we need to keep an eye on where our kids are and who they’re with.  The younger they are, the more careful the supervision has to be.

    The fact is that parenting takes time and energy.  I know, this is discouraging when a parent feels she doesn’t have enough time or enough energy.  But there are really no shortcuts in parenting.  Be available, supervise, build emotionally solid relationships, and pray.

    Avivah

  • An unexpected lesson from my old planner

    This morning I finally sat down to go through last year’s planner and transfer any information that was still relevant to this year’s calendar.  This is mostly phone numbers, but I also sometimes write down passing thoughts I want to remember and sometimes those are worth copying over again as well.

    Usually I really enjoy this process, because as I flip through each week of the past year, I see notations about so many things that I enjoy remembering.  Every year I delay in throwing away my old planner because it has so many good memories – actually, I didn’t throw away the planners for the three years prior to making aliyah until we moved to Israel!  Today was the first time in years that this was a different kind of experience.

    As I went through page after page, I began to have a sinking feeling in my stomach that got stronger and stronger.  I always transfer the information at one sitting, to get it all done and then move on to something else.  But without thinking consciously about what I was doing, I got up in the middle to make lunch, then realized I had done it to avoid seeing any more pages.  Somehow living through the last year wasn’t so bad lived one day at a time, but to flash through so much of the last year in an hour’s time was overwhelming.  Though I would tell anyone that it hasn’t been an easy 18 months, this is the first time that I emotionally felt how difficult it was.

    Then I read a question that I had written many months ago:  “How can I live a life I love right now?”  Usually this kind of question is hard for me; I rarely have an instinctive answer and usually I have to stretch to think about what could make my life better.  Today an immediate visceral response flashed through my mind.  Naturally, the two things that came to mind aren’t things that I’m currently doing.  🙂

    The reason I’m sharing this is because it’s all connected.  There is potential for a different kind of experience the coming year when I can not just answer the question, but integrate the answer into my life.  Not just for me, but for anyone who feels like they’d like to upgrade the quality of their lives.

    It wasn’t fun looking through my planner, but it was productive!

    Avivah

  • Young child stealing treats – how to respond?

    >>I have been dealing with a situation for a long time now and am out of ideas as how to handle it. This morning I gave up and just started yelling at my kid, and I know that is NOT the solution. My 3 year old wakes up at 5 am and gets into the cabinets and eats all the candy. That upset me but it seems normal enough, so i threw out the candy.  hes been doing that for weeks with different treats, and I have been getting angrier and angrier that he isnt following my directions. But what really really gets me upset is when he lies to me and tells me that he didnt eat it.  I was fuming this morning because he lied to me on 3 different counts.

    I am at loss as what to do.  I am trying to teach him to tell the truth but even as I do that he is lying!

    What should i do?

    It sounds so silly but I feel like every morning is ruined because i am stuck disciplining him first thing in the morning when i should be giving him love!<<

    First of all, take a deep breath and a step back.   Sometimes we get so caught up with issues in front of us that they look much bigger than they are.  Kids take treats without permission and it’s really normal.  He wants sweet stuff and so he takes it.  As adults, we get to eat what we want, when we want, but kids don’t have that kind of independence.  Think how hard it would be if you really wanted a chocolate bar and your husband refused to let you have one – isn’t it possible you’d try to get it when he wasn’t around?  I remember when my oldest was five, seeing him cramming a handful of sugar into his mouth just as I came into the kitchen – I was appalled.  But most of my kids at a young age (and sometimes even not such a young age) have done something similar.  Just an hour before I got this question, ds5 notified me that he found a date pit behind the bathroom door, where ds3 apparently went to eat it without being seen after helping himself from the cabinet. 🙂

    Often the reason we’re getting upset isn’t the circumstance itself, but our interpretation of the situation.  When you tell yourself he’s lying, that creates a lot of negative emotion for a parent.  I don’t see something like this from a three year old as lying; small children have a very flexible sense of reality.  By shifting the perspective on what he’s doing, we can remove a lot of the negative emotion that is behind our excessive anger.

    It might be helpful to see if you can find a solution to the need that’s being expressed.  Would it be helpful to create a predictable routine around when he gets special foods?   Maybe you can work out something with him as to so he knows when he’ll get treats – like make a regular time each day that he gets something special (it can be something healthy if that’s a concern – a fruit, popcorn, dried fruit, nuts, homemade baked goods), and let him take it out when it’s time to eat.  Since he’s taking things so early in the morning, perhaps the night before the two of you can prepare something that you can leave on the table, covered, for him to eat when he wakes up.  Make a big deal of how special this is, how he’s such a big boy that you know he can serve himself this food even before you’re awake.  Be very careful to keep this positive; don’t bring up his past ‘sins’ or make him feel guilty or defensive.

    If you see him taking something he shouldn’t, try saying something like this, “That looks really yummy, doesn’t it? I bet you wish you could eat a hundred pieces! Yum! That would be so tasty! But I think if I ate a hundred pieces my tummy would be sick. Do you think your tummy would feel good if you ate so much?” The point isn’t the words you use, but the message behind it – to show him that you understand him and aren’t blaming him, because he’s going to feel trapped and guilty if you catch him doing something that he already knows you disapprove of.  The question at the end isn’t to get an answer as much as to move away from the situation, to give him a way to save face and maneuver out of a potentially sticky situation.

    Avivah

  • Narrowing down the high school choices for ds13

    Several weeks ago, ds13 spent a day doing pyschometric testing at the yeshiva we decided is our top choice.   (All of the yeshivos we were looking into require this testing, so you only have to do it once and you can send the results to other yeshivos if you need to.)  After these results were received, all students they were interested in a follow-up interview with were invited on the same day.  Ds was in the hospital then and obviously couldn’t make it for the interview, so once he got out we rescheduled for today.  However, the head of the yeshiva called this morning to say he wasn’t going to be able to make it due to the weather; though ds had already left and the call came three minutes after his bus was scheduled to arrive, fortunately the bus was late and ds got the message in time.

    It’s funny how it didn’t occur to me to ask about the results of the testing, which was performed by an independent organization and I could have called to check how he scored.  No one in our family thought of it; to us it was something that had to be done but once the test was taken that was the end of it.  We still wouldn’t know his score if not for a student at that yeshiva who lives locally.  He saw ds at shul on Friday night and said, “I heard you did okay on your test.”  The friend who was with him nudged him and said, “Tell him what the rebbi said.”  So boy #1 told him, ds got the top score of all the applicants to the yeshiva.  That was nice to hear and though I’ve been telling ds all along that he’ll do fine with the testing and not to worry about it, it was good for him to have outside validation.

    Around the same time he went for the testing at this yeshiva, he also interviewed for the new high school that will be opening in the coming year here in Karmiel;  the plan is it will be a charedi yeshiva that offers the bagrut at the 5 point level.  Right now all the yeshivos like this are in the center of the country and it would be amazing to have something suitable right here in our city.  If it gets off the ground and the plans for the school continue to be in line with what we’re looking for, I assume this is where ds will attend since I feel very, very strongly that 14 year olds should be living at home.  But we’re making backup plans for attendance at a dorming yeshiva, the one that I mentioned he tested at (assuming he’s accepted) if the local one doesn’t work out.

    We decided against testing at Maarava mainly because most of their graduates seem to go with the long term kollel plan.  My husband was in kollel for ten years, so I’m obviously not anti-kollel.  But I am opposed to the idea that kollel is the right choice for everyone, and I’m bothered by the idea that it’s a negative value for men to support their families.  I don’t want ds to be in an institution in which he’ll get messages that push only this path.

    Some Anglo parents have told me that although they’re sending their boys to charedi elementary schools, they think that their sons will go to a yeshiva high school that offers secular studies and eventually will enter the professional world just as their husbands did.  I think they’re underestimating the messages their sons will be internalizing, messages that will make it unlikely that they’ll value an education apart from the traditional charedi model.

    There are a lot of ways that I feel we’re walking our own path since moving to Israel, and this is one of them.  It may sound like the high school choice I’ve shared about is logical but we know hardly anyone who is making the choices we’re making.  But as I’ve said for years, if you want what everyone else has, then do what everyone else does.  If you want something else, you have to find your own path.

    Avivah