Avivah Werner

Category: Parenting

  • A chat with my downstairs neighbor

    At about 9:45 on Shabbos morning, my ds5 went out of the building to do an errand for me, and when he returned a few minutes later, he was very upset.  He said (and my daughters confirmed since they could hear from all the way up here) that the downstairs neighbor yelled at him – in English – to stop running around and making noise in our apartment.

    When he told me this, I didn’t say a word.  On Shabbos mornings, I like to sleep in late, but because I have young children, I don’t actually sleep.  What I do is stay in bed, and since I don’t want them running around unsupervised, they join me and we read and play together there.  From the time they woke up at 7 am until 9 or 9:30, this is where they were, and it wasn’t until then that I allowed them to run around and play with each other (in their bare feet, because shoes would make more noise).  I’ve tried to accomodate this neighbor and reduce our noise in a number of ways, but once my child was verbally accosted, a line had been crossed that was unacceptable to me.

    So I got up, got dressed, and still without saying a word, left our home.  But my desire to be prudent prevailed and I decided to get advice from a neighbor who was here for many years before speaking to the difficult neighbor.  I then learned that this neighbor has told others that they’re hoping to make us so miserable that we’ll move away, and also complained that it’s not bad enough that we have children, but that we even have guests over (the person who was told this was shocked they weren’t embarrassed to say these things out loud).  After speaking to her, my initial anger was over, but my desire to take care of this issue wasn’t.

    I’ve said before regarding discussions about homeschooling that I won’t have conversations in which I’m put on the defensive, and that means sometimes turning things around and putting others on the defense instead.  There’s probably a martial arts term for this.  🙂  And this is what I felt needed to be done now, because he was viewing our niceness and efforts to be accommodating as weakness and I was certain he would continue to escalate unless we showed him we wouldn’t tolerate any more.

    So I went to his apartment, and pounded on his door as hard as I could.  This was to let him know someone who was very serious about something was going to be on the other side.  As soon as he opened it, he started yelling at me for banging on his door, but he didn’t have much of a chance to talk, since I started yelling over him: “How dare you yell at my son!  If you have a problem, you come to me.  Don’t start up with my children, and don’t start up with me!”

    He told me how loud my eleven children are, starting from 5 am in the morning, and I shouted at him that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, that we don’t have eleven children, they certainly don’t wake up at 5 am, and most of my children are older and aren’t making noise that would disturb him at all – so he’s clearly saying things that don’t make any sense.

    He got a little embarrassed here, and said, well, how many children do you have?  I told him it’s irrelevant, and his complaints about us are ridiculous, and even the police he sent to our house could see it was absurd.  He told me how  we should go buy a private house and live there, that we could have bought a house for the price we paid for our apartment (as if!), and I told him I’d be happy to buy a house and move there as soon as he gave us two million shekels to do so.  And until then we’re staying put and have no plans to go anywhere.  I told him if he doesn’t like living in a building with other people, then he can sell his apartment and buy himself a house if he thinks that’s so simple, but otherwise he’s going to have to accept things as they are.

    Then he told me if our kids want to play, they can play outside at a public park, not in the house.  I told him our children are entitled to play in their own home, and they’ll continue to do so.  I said I was sure when his son was young that he didn’t forbid him from doing anything but walking quietly across a room.

    As we continued to talk, he started to back down, and told me that he didn’t really yell at my son, and when I said he did, he said that he doesn’t feel well and so he sometimes he gets upset.  I told him I don’t care how upset he is, maybe he needs to take aspirin or vitamins but there’s no excuse to yell at a little child not even doing anything wrong.  So he  apologized for yelling at him.

    As the conversation continued, he became more reasonable, and then it was finally possible to talk to him.  He told me someone in the past replaced the tiles on the floor of my apartment, and didn’t put in any sound proofing.  I told him I understood why that would be a problem, but this was the first I was hearing of it, and I couldn’t afford to retile the majority of our living space to change this.  But at the end of the conversation, I said that if he was willing to pay for half of the cost, I would pay the other half.  He told me it was my apartment and he wasn’t going to pay a penny, so I shrugged and said it didn’t make a difference to me, that I don’t have extra money to throw around and would rather not have to spend any money on this, but was making the offer as a concrete indication of our willingness to find a solution.

    He told me to try to be more understanding, and I told him that I couldn’t be any more understanding than I had already been, and that there was nothing more I could do.  I wanted to be sure when we finished the conversation that he was clear about this.  So we parted, not exactly amiably, but at least I had a good feeling that some things had been straightened out.

    A friend, learning about this later in the day, said she couldn’t imagine me yelling at someone.  The things we do for our kids.  😛  Really, a big part of why I felt this had to be done so my kids would know that I wouldn’t let people hurt them if it were in my power.

    Although I was yelling and looked and sounded upset, I was watching myself the entire time, almost from a distance.  I felt almost like I was in a play, and was doing a good job playing my part convincingly.  When I first left my home, I was planning to speak to him in English and let him puzzle out what I was saying, because when I feel pressured, I tend to forget some Hebrew vocabulary, and I didn’t want to be at a language disadvantage.  But since I wasn’t angry by the time I spoke to him, it was no problem to yell at him in Hebrew.  🙂

    I’m not naive enough to think this will end the situation with him – he has a long history of being a difficult neighbor.  But my kids can feel safe walking into our building now and that’s a big thing, and hopefully this conversation will help him to rethink attacking us next time he’s feeling upset about something.

    Avivah

  • Time for a major parenting workup

    On the third night of Sukkos (Friday night), my family was invited together with several others to the sukka of the rabbi of the city.  I stayed home with ds12 who was at the beginning of his chickenpox saga, but the rest of the family went and enjoyed themselves very much.  They told me the rabbi’s wife was very nice, and yesterday at synagogue (the first time I went out with the kids in a week, because they still have pox marks on their face), she saw dd15 and asked her if I was there , since we hadn’t had a chance to meet yet.

    So I finally met her, and she really is very, very nice!  I like her very much. She told me how impressed she was with our children – she couldn’t believe how nicely they behaved without a mother there to keep them in line – and I told her how nice that was to hear, since I think they need a serious workup in  behavior right now. 🙂

    Recently, my older kids complained to me about the behavior of the littles – they’ve told me that they’re on their way to becoming spoiled brats.  They’re a bit strong in how they’re phrasing it – they’re far from obnoxious little kids – but they’re right that there’s definitely plenty of room for improvement.  With six months of preparing for our move to Israel, and then two months of being so busy setting up our lives here, I’ve been mentally less focused on the family itself than usual.  And what that has meant is that I’ve let my standards for the kids’ behavior drop.

    I was conscious of making the choice at a very busy time to keep the time I was with the littles positive rather than sporadically discipline them (dd14 at the time was frequently watching them while I was making calls and organizing things, and I couldn’t ask her to do what I would have done), but my older kids saw this as letting the littles get away with things that I’d never have let them do. This was mostly about the attitude rather than actual behavior.  I believe it’s important to pick a standard of what’s acceptable in your home, and then to stick with it.  If you can’t stick with it, you’re compromising yourself, because your kids won’t trust that you mean what you say. And so I decided to let some things go rather than be inconsistent.

    I know quite well what’s involved with a major retraining process – I took on this process once before, six years ago.  At that time, I looked at the kids and thought, everyone thinks they’re so well-behaved, but it doesn’t feel like it to me, and is parenting supposed to be this hard?  I wasn’t enjoying being with them, and a big part of that it felt like I always had to correct someone about something, break up some argument, or whatever.  But that wasn’t their fault, it was mine because I hadn’t taught them better.  And I’ve recently been feeling the way I felt six years ago.

    This process of consciously raising the bar of your expectations for your family is very, very intense, and it’s the only thing you can plan on doing for about a week.  This has logistically been challenging since we were dealing with a few weeks of Jewish holidays, guests, and six kids with chickenpox, in addition to the usual stuff.  So you can understand my reluctance to start this process.

    And then it has to stay a high priority for about three months until the new standards become second nature, and of course you have to continue to maintain these standards.   Part of the approach is based on total focus, and I was unsure how well this would work with everyone in school; in fact, the last couple of days the littles went back to school and it’s slowing down the learning process (because there they see behavior and attitudes that are unacceptable in our home).

    The reason it take a huge amount of time, energy, and focus, is that during this stage I feel it’s critical to be 100% consistent to follow up with every single tiny issue.  Usually this level of consistency isn’t necessary as a parent, but when redefining boundaries, it’s very important.  This isn’t a common approach, but it’s my approach.

    And so the last few days have been very draining.  (Which is why I haven’t been blogging; I fall into bed exhausted at night! :P)   This process means a parent has to expect some major power struggles, the kind of thing that we otherwise don’t see.  I knew this, and that’s why I needed to be fully mentally present to deal with it all calmly, and not to be so busy that I couldn’t see it through.

    We had a guest for the last three days of yom tov (well, it was three days for her), and her time with us coincided with the first few days of this process.  She probably thought I was incredibly controlling and nitpicky (since I was insisting that things be done exactly as I asked, to teach them to listen to what they’re told).

    In the beginning,  there’s a good bit of resistance and testing from the littles.  They want to show me that they’ll do what they want, and I need to teach them that they need to listen to their parent.  So this process means I had to expect power struggles at a level never seen before.  And I mean never.  (The two power struggles from six years ago have now become the stuff of family lore. :)) But that’s okay, I actually welcome these because I see them as a chance to show them that I will calmly outlast them.  After holding ds4 for almost two hours straight of crying, screaming, kicking, hitting, and squirming – because I told him to stand next to me and he wanted to do it his way – I was exhausted.  But it’s okay, because once there’s one major blow up, it kind of gets it out of their system – they see you mean what you say and they don’t need to keep pushing you to see how long they have to tantrum before you give in.

    Then yesterday was ds2’s turn to escalate.  Ds2 is amazingly sweet and helpful, always running to do whatever I ask, even when I’m not asking him!  But yesterday he lost it over a pair of underwear.  I gave him a choice of two pairs, he chose the one he wanted – and then went to ds4’s drawer and started screaming for one of those. His tantrum was shorter – not quite an hour, but it sure felt like a long time!  I held him on my lap in a bear hug for the entire time, reminding him that he could wear the underwear he chose and that’s it.   What was interesting for both of these tantrums was that as soon as they finished screaming, they took a deep sigh, went off my lap, and then came back right away to sit on my lap, facing towards me with their arms around me, and stayed there for a long time.  Being strong and being loving aren’t contradictions; our kids need and want the security of knowing we can and will enforce what we say.

    This is a retraining for me, too, because this process isn’t mostly about discipline.  It’s about being with your kids, enjoying them, and spending lots of time doing stuff together.  Versus letting them play while you get the things you want done.  So it’s a lot of togetherness, and that takes adjusting to since over the years, my older kids have been so involved in the fun stuff with their younger siblings that I became less involved in the hands-on activities and did more of the not so fun stuff, like running the house.  But now the older kids aren’t around as much, and it’s a shift back to how it was years ago, when I didn’t have older kids around.  It’s a very significant shift for me.

    My hope is that I’ll have the strength and emotional fortitude to hold out for what I think our family can be, rather than letting it be whatever it turns into, and that G-d will give me the desire and ability to see it through.

    Avivah

  • Helping kids adjust to a house that isn’t yet furnished

    >>How have your kids responded to the time it has taken to set up a “homey home”?>>

    When you’re just a couple, you can enjoy the adventure of living with nothing, being in a new country, and soak up all the new experiences.  But for a family with children, it’s very disconcerting and unsettling to be living out of boxes, not have ready meals, etc, and that affects their ability to positively perceive all the new encounters they have in the course of a day.  The more children you have, the more difficult this aspect of things can be, and their unhappiness can quickly dominate the home environment.  Kids need to have the security of home being home before being able to more fully embrace other aspects of their new lives.

    Our priority was to get the most important things into place quickly so the kids would feel like we were living here, not like we were having a bad camping trip.  Part of why we elected to buy things at a second hand store that were overpriced and not exactly the quality we wanted was because we could get it quickly and we wanted the kids to have a sense of being settled.  It’s not a coincidence that the only furniture I haven’t yet purchased is what dh and I need; we don’t love not having beds or a place to store things, but we can manage without losing our bearings.

    Having said that, I’ll share what we did in advance to make this aspect of things a bit easier.  Before coming, we spoke to the kids about the reality of different things we’d be facing as soon as we got here.  I know that most people focus on the excitement and privilege of making aliyah, and that’s wonderful.  But there can be a huge disconnect and letdown when those people arrive and see that there are very real challenges in living here.

    I knew that an empty apartment would not be a welcoming place to live, and wanted our children to be aware of this in advance so they wouldn’t be disappointed by the difference between their expectations and reality.  I really tried to make sure they would have an accurate sense of the challenges we’d immediately have, and at the time I wondered if I might have been playing down the excitement of the move too much.  One time, ds12 said, “If everything is going to be so bad when we get there, why are we going???”  But I now see their amazingly smooth transition, and feel it was in large part because they were emotionally prepared for all of this, even though the time frame from the decision to move and the move itself were relatively short.

    One of the issues I knew we’d face immediately was that we would have no furniture or appliances, and explained what that would mean.  I told them that meals would be very, very simple – that we’d be buying bread, yogurts, and vegetables daily for very basic meals until we got a fridge and stove.  I stressed this meant no hot or cooked food, and told them that there are no takeout places in Karmiel (with what we consider a reliable kosher supervision) so we wouldn’t be able to go out for a change of pace.

    We used a large part of our precious luggage allotment (:)) to bring sleeping bags, to have a place for us to sleep until we got beds.  This wasn’t comfortable at all, but it was still a place to lay down, and we were able to tell the kids in advance that this is what would be happening so when they got here they were ready for that.

    Another thing that I did that was to anticipate how we would keep things organized in the absence of closets.  It’s very hard to live out of suitcases for an extended period of time, and not being able to organize your things and find what you need makes a move to a new place much harder.  In order to offset this, I chose to bring 18 gallon Rubbermaid storage containers.

    In the past, I had used these to organize clothing storage in the attic, and as I emptied the storage and gave things away, I stacked the emptied containers in a pile for use in our packing.  We filled each storage container with clothing or whatever else we were packing, then put each container inside a large box, and then packed things like sleeping bags or larger clothing in the space between the box and the container.  Almost every standard sized box that I packed was done in this way.

    When we got here, I unpacked everything the first night, sorting everything into personal containers for each person. Everyone was then given his box, and these were lined up along the wall in the room their sleeping bags were in.  It was definitely squished, with sleeping bags almost totally lining the floors, but instead of the general chaos you might expect, each of them then had a way to keep their stuff relatively contained until we bought freestanding clothing closets.

    This was a huge help in the house staying neat, and for all of us to find what we needed each morning.  As we’ve purchased closets for the kids, the emptied containers have been transferred to other uses around the house, so bringing them was helpful in the short and long term.

    When we did get furniture, the kids were so appreciative for each item.  They knew what it was like not having it, and saw how much effort I put into getting it.

    So emotional preparation was an important step for us.  The second aspect wasn’t about what we did in advance, but what we did when we got here.   Kids take their cues from us to a large degree, and we tried to focus on the positives of being here and not complain about the difficulties.  When things would happen that could have been very frustrating, I would think about how we were weaving a quilt of our aliyah memories that one day we’d enjoy reminiscing about!

    Avivah

  • And the final school decision…

    >>So DS9 is still home? Is that hard for him being the only “school-aged” kid at home?<<

    From the time we first thought about moving to Israel and discussed which kids might benefit from going to school, ds9 was the one child that I had absolutely no question about.  I felt for the following reasons that sending him to an Israeli school would be throwing him to the wolves:

    – As an auditory learner, his reading skills are weak; we had this with dd15 who went on to excel at a later age so we aren’t concerned; however,  since their primary sense that’s engaged isn’t visual, reading is a later start for them.  This is understandable but he wouldn’t be anywhere near the Israeli kids in Hebrew reading ability.

    – His nature is very sensitive and gentle.  Israeli kids are notoriously not known for these qualities.

    – He tends to easily get frustrated and overwhelmed when faced with something he didn’t understand, and this sometimes leads to tears.  Not a good thing for a nine year old boy, particularly for one who is tall and looks like he’s about 12.

    – His strengths of personality are the kind that aren’t quickly and easily seen; he has a depth of perception and compassion, a gentle and caring spirit, and an artistic and musical bent – but this doesn’t lend itself to playground play, and when combined with the above tendency, I was afraid he would be targeted by bullies.

    So when we decided to send everyone else to school, I felt really good about the idea of having him home to build up his reading skills one on one, to give him lots of time and attention, to build our relationship and use the opportunity to build his confidence in his abilities.

    But then I thought about what his self-perception would be about everyone being in school except for him.  As I contemplated this, I realized that he could easily internalize the message that someone is wrong with him, that we don’t think he can make it in school like everyone else.  And I remembered a story Steven Covey (of the Seven Habits) shared regarding one of his children:

    He had a child who was socially very awkward, physically clumsy and uncoordinated, and immature in pretty much every way.  When his siblings would make fun of him, his parents would tell them, “Leave him alone, can’t you see he’s doing his best?”  And then they’d tell him encouraging things to build him up.  One day, though, they realized that despite their words to him, deep in themselves they felt he was lacking.  And no matter what words they were using, the deeper disbelief in his abilities was being communicated to him.

    So he and his wife made a decision to see him as capable and treat him as such, to stop protecting him so much and give him a chance to find his own strengths.  As he grew up and matured, he turned into a wonderful young man who was skilled in all of the areas that he seemed so weak in.

    When thinking of keeping ds9 at home, part of my concern was that he couldn’t be successful in school at this time (though at a later age I wouldn’t be worried).   And no matter how positively I presented to him that he’d continue homeschooling, I recognized that part of my underlying feeling about his ability wasn’t fully supportive of who he is, regardless of my words to myself otherwise. Not only that, he would feel different than all of his siblings, and in a way that would be damaging to his sense of self.

    And so a week ago, I took ds9 to meet the principal of a local boys’ school.  (None of my kids thought this was a good idea, and ds12 went so far as to repeatedly warn me that it was a really bad idea.)  Ds9 wasn’t interested, but my repeated message to him was that I thought he’d gain a lot out of school.  You could kind of say I took a tough love approach.  🙂  I was very impressed with the principal, and liked the school philosophy, which is more similar to mine in terms of attitudes towards religious inclusion and focus on character than most Israeli schools.

    I also met his teacher, who was very, very highly spoken of as an extremely warm and experienced teacher, and met the person who would be his personal tutor, to help him get a handle on the language.  I liked when the tutor told me that the focus of the school for the first six months wouldn’t be on academics at all, but on helping him get the language and acclimate – this is exactly my focus at this time, and I appreciated that I wouldn’t have to argue with the administration about how much academics to push.

    This isn’t the school that ds12 is going to and though it’s a very good school, isn’t where people expect us to send our kids, but I had a very strong feeling that this is where ds9 would thrive.  At this school they are better equipped to handle olim (new immigrants), have a wider academic and extracurricular program, and have a shorter school day.  And putting him in a different school from his older brother meant he would have the chance to define himself, away from any comparison to his socially, athletically, and academically gifted older brother and the threat of the shadow from below of his similarly gifted younger brother.

    When I dropped him off the next morning for his first day, his eyes started filling up with tears, and I told him, “I know it won’t be easy to not be able to understand what’s going on around you.  But every single one of your siblings (then I detailed each one) is having the same challenge – none of them understand anything in their classes either.  It won’t be easy but you’re going to do great.  If you need anything, tell your teacher or someone else; you’re got to tell people what’s wrong so they can help you.  You can’t start crying.  Don’t worry about speaking in Hebrew; your teacher understands English and lots of the kids have learned some English in school, too.  You’re going to do great!”

    So he wiped his eyes and I left to take ds4 to his first day of school (Friday).  All day I was thinking about ds9 and wondering how he did, but inside myself I really felt he was going to do well.  I wasn’t thinking about all the reasons it would be hard that had kept me from considering school as a positive option for him until this point, but about what a great kid he was and this would be a chance for him to find his inner strength.  I needed to reflect his strengths to him, not my fears about his weaknesses, and my decision to send him to school reflected an inner shift that I had made.

    He came home from his first day of school surprisingly happy.  It’s been amazing to me to see the positive changes in him in just a week – he’s much more relaxed, positive, helpful, and feels so good about himself.  His entire aura has shifted in a hugely positive way, something I wasn’t anticipating but am so, so grateful for!

    So that winds up our decision making process regarding sending the kids to school!  (For this year – I don’t consider this a forever decision,but as always, an educational choice that we will continue to evaluate and assess each year.)  It was pretty intense as dh and I discussed every single child one by one, and one by one made the decision for each of them.  It would have definitely simplified the registration process if we had decided to send them all at one time, so that I didn’t have to make repeated visits to the schools.  🙂  But though it wasn’t the efficient way to do it, it was the right way to do it for us.

    It’s been a really big and unexpected shift for me to go from eleven years of homeschooling all of our children (seven at home last year and nine at home the year before), to having just ds2 at home with me.  It was because I knew we’d homeschool that I felt confident about making the move to Israel with so many older school aged children, and so it’s particularly ironic to me that we’re not homeschooling now that we’re here!  But I have a deep sense of peace about this decision now, and am glad I was able to set aside my own ego and preferences to do what was best for my kids.

    Avivah

  • Loving difficult people

    >>I am really struggling in my life with my relationship with a few people. I will have to say my nature finds it much easier to write them off and be done with them, but I don’t think that’s the right thing.  I know that I don’t have to be best friends with these people or even spend a lot of time with them, but I really struggle with my anger and frustration with them. <<

    I’ve held off on responding to this for a while, since it’s been an issue I personally had to deal with pretty intensely fairly recently.  I was told by someone that I’m an abusive, cruel, unfeeling person, and that every single interaction we’ve had in the many years we’ve known one another is proof of this – it was shocking to me to see even the nicest things I’ve done for this person (and there were a lot) twisted into proof for her criticisms.

    I had to work hard to find peace of mind about this situation – I don’t think this is something a person can resolve at a core level without the willingness to go beyond one’s emotional comfort zone, and though I’ve made a lot of progress, I think I’ll continue to be faced with challenges in this arena that will push me to grow to a higher level of acceptance for her.  What I’m sharing is what I’ve found helpful, but very much isn’t coming from someone who has ‘arrived’; I have to consciously work to detach when thoughts about what’s been said come into my mind.  With the Jewish month of Elul just begun, a unique time in which introspection and self-improvement is a focus, it seems like an especially good time to share some thoughts on this issue.  Additionally, I received two calls on this same issue in the last few weeks, and I think this is something that most of us have to grapple with at some time in our lives.

    – I’ve found it helpful to realize that it’s really not about me and what I do or don’t do, even if that’s what is being expressed.  It’s about the person and their pain.  I have a tendency to think that if I just try hard enough, it can be worked out.  Sometimes you really have done something to hurt someone and an amends is in order, but sometimes, nothing you do will make the situation better.  In this case, I tried to empathize with her pain, then move on.

    – It’s important to have healthy boundaries with people like this, who can be energy vampires; they suck positive energy from those around them.  Be respectful, be kind – but respect and protect your emotional boundaries.

    – Don’t make the mistake of thinking that better communication is the answer.  Often in these circumstances, communication becomes a power struggle rather than an honest way for two people to clarify their thoughts and feelings.

    – ‘What kind of person do I want to be?’  This is something I repeatedly asked myself when deciding how to respond to hurtful comments.  I sometimes felt a strong desire to respond in kind to what was done/said to me, but that would have been moving away from the person I hope to one day be.

    – Don’t let others keep you from seeing the beauty in yourself.  When people are critical and judgmental of you, it can cause you to doubt yourself, to start to think that you really are the cause of the problems or difficulties that they claim are your fault.  They are entitled to their opinions, but they don’t have the right to keep you from shining your light out.

    – Pray for them. If you don’t feel like doing this (I didn’t), pray for the desire to pray for them.  Prayer is very powerful and whether it consciously affects them or not, it changes your feelings inside of being a victim of their actions to being a person who rises above that.  A simple but powerful prayer that I first read in a book by Kay Sheppard is, “Bless them, change me”.  Ask for help in responding appropriately, for using this as a positive growth experience.

    – Look for the good in them.  Everyone has positive qualities.  Find them, and focus on them.  It doesn’t take away the pain of dealing with difficult people, but it keeps you from being consumed by bitterness.  The more we focus on finding light, the more darkness we can push away.

    Are there things you’ve found to be helpful when dealing with difficult people?  Please share them!

    Avivah

  • Finding a lost little girl

    On Sunday, dh and I went to Jerusalem, along with ds18.  Dh and I needed to sign the final paperwork for our mortgage (thank G-d, finally complete – it was delayed because the person handling it was on vacation and they wouldn’t release the file to anyone else to work on so we had to wait until he returned from the vacation!!), and though ds18 was accepted to his yeshiva without an interview based on the strength of his recommendations, they said it would be nice if he could come in before the term officially begins.

    The bus ride from Karmiel to Jerusalem is almost three hours, which allowed us a nice amount of time to rest, read, and wonder why they don’t have bathrooms on these long distance buses.  🙂  Once we got there, we took care of the bank paperwork, then decided we’d have lunch before going over to ds’s yeshiva.

    We couldn’t find a schwarma shop, which is what we wanted, so we finally settled on a pizza place.  There was a young couple there with two young children, and as we were getting ready to leave, I noticed the little girl, maybe four years old, was crying for her mother.  So I went over to see what was wrong and – her parents had left the pizza shop and forgotten her behind.  I went out to the busy street to find them, hoping I would remember what they looked like, but no luck.  Meanwhile, I was reassuring their little girl that we’d find them soon and not to worry.

    I went back to the pizza shop and asked the owners if he remembered what the parents looked like, and he told me they were driving a red car.  I went back out, along with someone else who by then had gotten concerned about the situation, and spotted a red car about a block away.  The other woman pushed the little girl in that direction and told her to run to her car, but I was uncomfortable abdicating responsibility without seeing an adult actively taking charge of her so I stayed to keep an eye on her.

    A moment later, her mother came driving up and her father came from somewhere else and spoke to her.  The other person grasped what happened before I did, and told me: they hadn’t accidentally forgotten her.  They told her it was time to leave, but she didn’t want to go.  So they purposely left without her, while the father stood out of sight in a nearby storefront to keep an eye on her.

    Regarding the backdrop of this mini-drama, we weren’t in a quiet residential neighborhood.  We were in a very, very busy area by a four lane highway, and besides the obvious safety concerns, it would have frightened someone much older to have been left in an unfamiliar place like that.  I have a four year old and can only imagine how terrified he would have been in that situation.

    When I realized that the father must have seen me walking back and forth searching for her parents with her crying next to me, but stayed hidden so he could teach his daughter a lesson, I was furious.   I’m a strong proponent of showing kids you mean what you say, following through, etc, but there’s a way to do it, and this wasn’t it.  To traumatize a young child like this and purposely let her think she was abandoned is horrific.

    I walked away when I saw the little girl was with her parents, but by the time I was half a block away, I was so upset about this situation that I strongly regretted that I hadn’t told her parents my thoughts on their misguided approach to parenting and discipline.  I really try not to be judgmental of what I see when I’m out – all of us are sometimes tired and cranky, and it’s not fair to judge people based on what might not be a typical parenting scenario for them.  But in this case, I felt very, very strongly that they had chosen a damaging approach to teach a lesson, and the lesson learned probably wasn’t quite the one they thought they were teaching.

    Children deeply need the security of knowing that their parents are there for them, will protect them and love them no matter what.   And as a parent, this isn’t an easy thing to consistently communicate.  But choosing a disciplinary approach like this is to actively teach a child that her parents can’t be trusted to be there for her.  Even as an adult, when people you’re depending on let you down, you’re going to be more reserved and cautious before making yourself vulnerable with them again.

    From their behavior in the pizza shop, I think these were nice people, definitely well-intended.  I’m positive they only wanted to show their daughter that she needed to listen to them when they told her something.  Sometimes we don’t have have accurate information or good advice to guide us, and we make sad mistakes like this.

    Avivah

  • Camping trip – day 1

    I’ve told you about preparing for our trip, now on to the fun of the trip itself!

    The state park we went to is one that we’ve gone to three times before – the last time we went camping at a different state park that had some less than pleasant surprises, we agreed we’d go back to our favorite campsite in the future.  The park is called Greenbriar State Park, in Boonsboro, MD, about an hour and a half away.  One thing we especially like about this park is that there’s a beach for swimming and fishing, in addition to the hiking trails.

    We usually choose the campsite closest to the path that leads to the lake, but since it was prime camping season when we went this time, our usual site would be in the middle of where everyone was walking.  We got there and told them we’d like to drive around and pick the site we liked before registering, and found a site we were really happy with.  The way the campgrounds are set up is like this:  in the center is a public bathroom.  Then in a ring around that are campsites, a ring around that is the road that people use to access the campsites, and then the final ring around it is campsites.

    We chose a site that was across from the bathroom (important in the middle of the night, when it’s nice to have an easily followed path), but on the outer loop.  Even though there were a lot of people camping when we got there, the sites across from us and on each side of us were empty.  On one side of our site was a forested area, with a stream running through – the kids could explore this huge area and I was able to easily keep them in sight the entire time.  There was a path from there to the fishing part of the beach, and since the entire time we were there we only once saw people there, it was like our personal path and forest.  It really didn’t feel that different from when we’re the only people there!

    The first thing we did when we got there was to set up both tents.  I had wanted to bring only one (keeping it simple!)  but the kids asked to take both, so I agreed on condition the site we chose had room for them.  I took ds2 for a walk to the lake while the older kids set up the tents – he was out of sorts from sleeping in the car and being woken up abruptly, so keeping him happily occupied made things more pleasant for everyone.  Ds3 and ds5 explored the stream and forest next to the site in the meantime, and then everyone collected firewood.

    When I got back, the tents were up, the campfire was going, and a lot of the things unpacked.  I heard a distant rumble and asked the kids if they heard anything.  It was sunny and nice out, and they said they thought it was an airplane.  I wasn’t so sure, and when I heard the distant rumble again a couple of minutes later, I told them we needed to get the rain flys on the tents.  As they were putting it on, I was racing to get all the gear into the tent with the better rain cover, and put away all the food and supplies that had been unpacked.  Ds12 told me he didn’t see any point, that it wasn’t going to rain and if it did, it would take at least a half hour until it got there.  I told him we’d need it and to get it up fast; not even a minute later the wind started to blow and I warned the kids that a storm was coming fast – and within a minute of saying that, the rain started to pour.  (This was about five minutes from when the sky looked clear and the rumble had been so distant that we could hardly make it out.)

    The rain fly on the main tent wasn’t fully on yet, but it mostly was so it stayed dry as ds12 and dd14 worked to get it totally on.  Then they put on the fly for the other tent – I told them to forget about it and come inside the first tent, but I think they were enjoying working in the pouring rain together.  🙂  We had started a campfire for dinner, planning to cook hamburgers, but our fire was quenched by the rain; even after the storm was over, the forest was soaked so there was no dry wood to be found.  So I brought sliced bread, butter, jam, and canned vegetables into the tent to have for dinner instead.

    After the storm cleared, we decided to take a walk to the beach, so everyone got into their bathing suits (except me and dd14 – she no longer has a modest bathing suit that fits, and mine is a maternity one so I wasn’t going to wear that).  When we got to the beach, we were the only people there – they closed the beach for 90 minutes because of the storm, so all the day visitors who were there left.  We were the first ones on the beach after the beach reopened, and after that only two other families came (who were also camping there), so we each had our own spacious section of the beach to ourselves.  I hadn’t been sure we’d be able to go to the beach at all since it’s such a popular place in the summer, and not exactly filled with modestly clad people.  So this was really, really a nice bonus resulting from the storm.

    We got out a few minutes before 9 pm and headed back to the campsite.  Since it was almost dark, I said it was time for bed.  But ds12 wanted to get the campfire started – he said it didn’t feel like a camping trip without a campfire – and the littles didn’t want to stay in the tent when they could hear the action all around them.  Dd10 figured out how to get the hurricane lamp working (the second lamp was defective), and between that and the electric lantern we had, we had some dim light at the campsite.

    I started our new readaloud by Joan Aiken, The Serial Garden, which was easy to get into, and easy to see thanks to the camping headlight that I strapped to my forehead!  When it was just a few minutes to ten, I told ds12 he had four minutes to get the fire started and then it was bedtime for everyone.

    Remarkably, after almost an hour of trying, he got it started in those few minutes, and we all sat around singing together.  (Every time we go camping, I think that we should make a booklet of songs that we like to sing that we could pass out, but I haven’t yet done that.)  After about an hour, I put the littles to bed (or should I say, to sleeping bag?), and went to sleep myself.  The kids had asked if I could stay in one tent with the littles so that they could have a ‘party’ tent, and I agreed.  I didn’t have a very restful night, since ds2 and ds3 kept waking up and being frightened since they didn’t know where they were, so I would quickly wake up each time to reassure them. I heard the middles and dd14 drying out their tent and then talking together until late into the night.

    Avivah

  • Camping trip preparations

    We’re back from our fantastic camping trip!

    Usually we go camping the first weekend after Memorial Day, when the season opens but no one is there yet so we have the campgrounds to ourselves.  This year that weekend coincided with the Torah Home Education Conference, and the following two weeks I was busy with lots of doctor and dental visits – and then it was in the prime of camping season with lots of people out, so we missed our chance.

    But as we were talking about going through the garage and selling all the stuff in it, I was feeling like I really wanted to go camping one more time before we moved.  I asked dh about it, and he said he didn’t have any vacation days to use, so he couldn’t do it.  Last year no one wanted to go camping because they felt it would be so much work with the littles, but this year, the littles are 2, 3.5, and 5, which (in my opinion) makes the dynamic a bit easier.  Then again, we wouldn’t have the help of dh, ds18, or dd16 – in short, the most heavily involved organizers of past trips.  But I felt it would be a good opportunity for the middles to step up and into the roles of responsibility.  There’s also the bonding factor in camping that I wanted us to share before we move – we’ve noticed on past trips that there’s very little interpersonal friction when we’re camping; something about being in the outdoors all day and doing what you need to do consumes all of the available energy in a constructive way.

    So I ran the idea of a trip on our own, with minimal preparation, by the kids.  All of the kids liked the idea, except for dd14.  She said we have so much to do to get ready to move that it would be too much pressure to pack for this trip, then have to unpack – just too much work.  I told her we’d keep it really simple (she was skeptical about this – she said I always say that!), but if she would rather stay home, it was fine with me.  She opted to come along.

    The check-in time for the state park we chose was at 3 pm, so I figured we’d leave at 1 pm.  We started preparing for the trip that morning, since dh had worked late on Sunday night and we didn’t have the car to pack into.

    Camping gear – So Monday morning, we pulled out two tents, seven sleeping bags, and three camping pads from the garage.  I told the kids if we didn’t have something, we’d have to manage without it – we were short a sleeping bag, so I said the three littles could share two sleeping bags between them (two sleeping bags can zip together to create a double size sleeping bag). They took out the camping stove and a few bottles of propane, which ds then checked – all empty.  They told me we could exchange it at Walmart – but I said, nope, we’re keeping it simple and I’m not making an extra trip.  Then they said the campground might be able to exchange them (the one we went to last time did), so we took the empties along.  Turned out this campground didn’t sell propane, so we did all of our cooking directly over the campfire.  Most of the flashlights and lanterns needed batteries, so we didn’t take them since….. right, keeping things simple.  We took along a couple of hurricane lamps and torch fuel instead.  I told the kids if we couldn’t work out the light situation, we’d go to sleep when it got dark, and manage with the light of the moon and whatever shone out from the public bathroom.

    Food – Packing food for the trip was super simple – I went to my pantry and started pulling down jars and cans – home canned cherries, mandarin oranges, pineapple, home canned butter and jams, pickles, corn, green beans, pickle relish, ketchup, mustard, oats, sucanat.  Then to the freezer – bagels, hot dog and hamburger buns, bagels, sliced bread, cottage cheese, sour cream, hot dogs, and ground beef.  And then we took some cukes and tomatoes from the fridge – and that was it, except for a trip to the store for smores fixings – which I don’t keep around the house. (Breakfast – fruit, oatmeal, milk/cottage cheese; lunch – sandwiches with butter and jam, cukes and tomatoes; dinner – hot dogs or hamburgers with corn, green beans.)

    Clothing – I told everyone to take one outfit in addition to what they were wearing, and a bathing suit.  Since it’s July, I didn’t think sweatshirts would be necessary.

    Misc supplies – matches, dish soap, large bucket (for hauling water), garbage bags, can openers, paper plates, plastic cups, and silverware.

    Fun stuff – since we didn’t have three family members with us, we were able to take out the front bench in the van.  This gave us more space than usual, so we were able to take along two adult bikes and helmets.  We took three pairs of roller blades, two fishing rods and tackle, and a big floaty toy in case we went to the beach.  We took along two books so we’d have something to choose from for a read aloud.

    Adopting the attitude of managing with what we had kept the preparations simple and low stress.  Usually I’d go out to buy everything we’d need, and have an impeccable detailed list of things to take, and that feels kind of stressful.  We cut out all the pressure by adopting the attitude that we’d manage with what we had.  This is an attitude that in general that makes life easier, but when on a family trip, is especially valuable since you could easily otherwise get irritated about not having what you want with you!  And for us, this trip wouldn’t have happened without this attitude, because I would have felt too overwhelmed with all that I’m already doing to have taken on planning for a family trip as well.  🙂

    Avivah

  • Camping trip 2011

    Gone camping.  And maybe fishing.  Definitely biking, roller blading, and maybe boating.

    It’s the first time I’ve gone camping by myself and without all the kids; dh didn’t have vacation days available, ds18 (had a birthday last week!) is in NY, dd16 is in Israel.  Should be interesting. 🙂

    Avivah

  • Not at camp…and loving it!

    “Are your kids going to camp this summer?”

    No, they aren’t.  In the past few years, we’ve usually had one or two the older kids going to camp for two – four weeks, but this is the first year in the last five that no one is going at all.  I enjoy having my kids home and we’re used to spending time together, and though it can be initially be difficult for parents and children who are used to a lot of time apart to suddenly find themselves together all day, spending the summer together doesn’t raise my blood pressure. 🙂  Though the kids enjoy camp, they enjoy being home as well, so it’s not as if being home for the summer is an exercise in deprivation.

    I’m not in any way against sending kids to camp, as long as: a) they are old enough for it to be a positive experience; b) the atmosphere is a positive one; and c) I can afford it. 

    Today I was thinking today how nice it is now that the kids’ friends are all in camp and I don’t have the constant distractions that pull us in different directions.   Very recently I was disturbed to notice that my kids (the middles) were enjoying being with their friends more than their siblings.  I consider this to be upside-down, and it’s something I’m working on straightening out.  The last few days have been wonderful and I’m feeling very good about seeing things shift back to how they should be. 

    Today was a good example of how spending time together in a relaxed family framework is enjoyable.   We started our day by heading to the county fair; dd14 asked me if we could go this year since it will be our last time; it was a big part of her life when she was in 4H (as well as for dd16), and there are a lot of really nice memories they’ve had of being part of that experience.  Despite the heat, we all enjoyed it. 

    An NRA representative had a booth there and I paid a very minimal sum for dd10 and ds12 to  do some shooting with an air rifle (after getting some gun safety instruction).  Dd14 wanted to do some shooting but then noticed the male instructor was touching people on the arm to guide them so she decided to pass on it.  Ds12 and dd10 did great  – their accuracy went up very fast, and ds12 was invited to join their shooting club in January.  I don’t know if it was his obvious interest or how quickly his accuracy improved,  but whatever it was, if we would be living here, I would have tried to facilitate that, but obviously that won’t be an option.  🙂 

    Ds12 noticed a booth where you throw a ball and if you hit the target, it drops water balloons on the head of the volunteer manning the booth, and told me he thought ds3 and ds5 would enjoy it.  So I bought a ticket with three throws; ds5 threw it first and since it totally missed the entire target area, got another chance (he was standing far back where adults throw from, not close up like younger children).  He missed, but then ds3 threw it and it shockingly hit the target, but lightly so only one water balloon dropped out – but he was thrilled anyway!  Then ds12, the best baseball player in his entire league (no exaggeration, just being descriptive – he set a record) threw his ball, and was totally embarrassed to miss by a wide shot! 

    When ds5 ran to pick the ball up, he started to throw it again (not realizing that you had to pay for every throw), and the volunteer let him.  He hit the target but when the water balloons dropped out, they didn’t break!  So the volunteer told ds5 to throw the balloon directly at him.  He did, but it still didn’t break.  Then the volunteer threw it to ds5 (it didn’t break), ds5 threw it back – and at that point, ds took matters into his own hands by running over to the target and hitting it hard so that the balloons dropped out hard and finally soaked the volunteer.  Everyone there was laughing at the absurdity of unbreakable water balloons, and ds3 and ds5 loved it!  I hope that’s one of those nice memories that they’ll have even when they are much older. 

    The three littles received balloon creations of their choosing made by the balloon clown artist there, and we toured all the exhibits.  One exhibit was to name all the raw vegetables in a large bowl, then match them up to the processed products in cans.  The women in charge of the booth were very impressed that ds5 recognized every vegetable there – they said he was the first one of the day, including adults!  Which is kind of pathetic, really, since the vegetables weren’t so rare.  (Cabbage, beets, carrots, corn, cucumbers, peppers, zucchini, yellow squash, tomatoes, green beans, peas, onions, and maybe a couple of other things.) 

    The older kids enjoyed the goat show (dd14 found it most interesting since years ago she competed in sheep shows so she’s familiar with what’s involved), and the littles enjoyed seeing all the farm animals.  After our experience raising ducks last summer, viewing the adult ducks there was particularly interesting – dd10 noticed two ducks that were the same breeds we started with – a Swedish blue and Rouen.

    When we left, I asked the kids to vote on going home or going to a park a few miles away.  (We had very quickly packed some food for lunch just in case we were out longer than planned- ds12 at my bequest grabbed a couple of loaves of bread from the freezer, two jars of canned butter, and two jars of jam -so we had the flexibility to change plans on the spur of the moment since we didn’t have to go home for lunch.) They all voted on the park, and we got there in the heat of the day.

    We parked ourselves under the shade of some trees and started our picnic, and while we ate the only other family there left.  So we had the entire place to ourselves, and the kids had a great time together.  It was very relaxing for me, too.  We fortunately brought a lot of water with us, as well as a place to refill it, which was critical since it was really hot (did I mention that already? :))  We stayed for about three hours before finally heading home, and by that time it was just about time to get ready for dinner!

    Avivah