Change happens in very little time

It is striking me once again, how fast a baby grows up. About a month ago, my son was mobile and into everything. I could barely do anything but follow him around to keep him out of trouble. Now, he actually follows directions (like "sit down on the chair, you aren't allowed to climb on the table.") He is getting better at pointing at what he wants, since he isn't saying much at all. You can only communicate so much with grunts, squeals, giggles, and wails. Fortunately, he has also begun to like me to read his picture books to him where we name the pictures. I'm consciously putting more time into that to help him learn the names for things, in hopes that he will start to say the names. A few weeks ago, he would run off having no interest in books at all.

I remember this time with my girls. When the Pillowfight Fairy was this age, she was also barely containable and I was pregnant with the Adrenaline Junkie. I remember at the grocery store, asking mothers of a toddler and baby how far apart in age their kids were. I was all the time trying to figure out how one manages two kids with very different needs while still doing the necessary errands. I needn't have worried so much. Once the Fairy turned 18 months, she began to turn into an older child who was easier to manage. I saw the same thing happen with the Adrenaline Junkie when I was pregnant with the Happy Boy. This time I'm beginning to see it with the Happy Boy (perhaps noticing it earlier, since it is a familiar thing now). He is still a handful, but I'm seeing the beginnings of a new life with an older child.

I suppose it is a tendency that all people have: to see what the present circumstances are, and assume the future continues on in that fashion. The reality is that change happens and it happens quickly.

The Adrenaline Junkie showed no interest in letters at the same age as her sister. She had different interests, but then we got a leap frog video teaching the alphabet and she had the letters and their sounds mastered in no time. She was never as interested in drawing as her sister. Her Sunday craft papers were barely scribbled for the longest time. She was too busy running around to sit down and draw. Then a few months back, she decided that scribbling was a fun thing to do. Then suddenly one day, she was drawing recognizable people figures and writing mostly legible letters of the alphabet. As my husband noted in a recent post, she is starting to sound out words. She is beginning to be ready to read at age 3 1/2 just like her sister. I would never have guessed it. She always seemed to be less interested in academics and more interested in climbing and running. Now she wants school work, too. She still has a tendency to wiggle off her seat, so I'll have to keep any teaching to just a few minutes at a time at first.

The Pillowfight Fairy has been changing, too. But in her case it has been more subtle. It has to do with her making choices to do group things (like Christian Day camp) when she has a very strong loner tendency and has often complained about how she doesn't get along with the other kids. She is also becoming more aware of her surroundings. It is like she is starting to pick up a small amount of perspective. She is more aware of the passage of time. She is more aware of the fact that people buy and sell and she would like to do some of that to get what she wants. She complained bitterly about schoolwork, and now that it is over she keeps wanting to get started on the new year of books. Her craft projects have demonstrated her increased mastery of words and art and numbers.

In each case, I see a little glimpse of the future in my children. So now that I've mostly got the next school year planned out. I need to turn my attention to a late spring cleaning and getting ready for the next phase. I can see it coming around the corner. It's trying to sneak up on me. The youngest is outgrowing his changing table. He is wanting to do big kids stuff like coloring and looking at books with thin pages. The middle child wants to be like her older sister and use glue, tape and scissors. The oldest wants to do all sorts of things she hasn't even thought of yet, but as soon as she knows about them, she's all for it. I need to sort through everybody's toys and thin out what isn't played with anymore. I need to start rearranging what toys are in the living room to be shared by everyone. I need to make room in each bedroom. For the girls, they will eventually need room for more older kid stuff, that their brother still can't play with. For the Happy Boy, he will need a new bed by the time he turns two next February. Since we are trying to have another baby and since any such baby would be sharing a room with him, we can't remove all the baby furniture yet. But we will need to make it more workable for an older Happy Boy.

Now, I love planning what needs to be done. I have always planned for the future (usually long before it is needed). But, This kind of planning, where one tries to balance the different needs of so many people when they are all in a state of change, reminds me of juggling. The attention is drawn to the most immediate action needed, but you can't completely ignore the other items yet, since they are on an incoming path, too. There is multi-tasking and then there is multi-tasking. This is some heavy multi-tasking. Hopefully, I can get the basic outline of a plan set up before I start the new year of school with the girls. Isn't summer just a wonderfully relaxing time of year (said with heavy sarcasm). I find myself looking forward to fall when I can get into a regular routine.

Family Values? Which ones?

Not too long ago, I read a news story that caught my attention and got me thinking profound thoughts. We'll see how well those profound thoughts translate to a blog.

The news story was about how "The Mob" is having hard times lately. The reasons stated involved tougher law enforcement and a decay in family values. Apparently, the younger generation of mobsters are more ready to rat each other out to avoid jail time. Besides finding this somewhat amusing in itself, it got me thinking about family values in general. For instance, what family values is "the Mob" known for? Family secrets stay family secrets. Family honor is prized highly enough to die over. "The Family," both born and made, work together to benefit "the Family" regardless of legality.

OK. That's just what I could think up in a few minutes, based on my viewing of numerous movies that stereotype this group, plus a bit of U.S. history that I know which mentions them. Does it hit you as a little weird that a network of crime families is troubled because they are losing touch with their traditional family values? Do criminals have family values? Well, yes they do in fact. Actually, we are so used to hearing "Family Values" being talked about by politicians and an assortment of talking heads on T.V., we forget that the words have meaning of their own.

I don't know what you think about when someone starts talking about family values. After thinking about it, I generally think about quality of family life, family friendly society, family friendly entertainment, government programs to aid families such as education, welfare, social security, and medical care. Why do I think of these things? Are these the things I value for my family? The closer I look, the less I see these things as what I really value for my family. I do want a good quality of life for my family, but what I see as quality of life, may not be what you think of and almost certainly isn't what can be given to me by anyone but my family and me. I can't do much about society in general except to try to live among people with which I want to be in society. If I watch entertainment that isn't family friendly, I have only myself to blame. No one is forcing me to watch. As for various government programs mentioned above which were intended from the beginning to improve life for families one way or another, I have various disagreements with them too. I don't believe that the government should have a monopoly on educating the children. In my family's case, we homeschool instead of using the local government funded school, believing this helps our family fulfill our family value on education. We are doing our best to avoid welfare. Watching the last 50 years or so of the use of welfare in U.S. history, our family sees danger in relying on welfare beyond a quick help in dire emergencies. Social security was also designed to help out the older members of our families and lighten the burden a family bears when the older members can't work anymore. It has it's good reasons indeed. However, I have been told since I was a child that my generation probably wouldn't get any benefit from it since it will probably fail in the retirement of the Baby Boom generation. At the rate the people in charge have been fixing this problem, that prophecy will probably be true. My husband and I have made our own retirement investments and see paying into Social Security as helping our parents. As for medicine, I don't want a government program to dictate my medical decisions or my doctors' practice of medicine. We are perfectly happy with our HMO.

I value for my family, love, fun, security, home, and faith. How that works out seems to be what people in politics like to argue about. I value being, with my husband, the primary decision makers about how we achieve the best situation we can for our own family. I value spending time with others who have similar values as ours. I value relationships and institutions that build up my family and don't tear it down.

Now, it is tempting to me to think that everyone else must value the same things. I may have thought that once, but I don't anymore. Every culture around the world has a set of family values that have developed over many generations. There are a few similarities which are usually due to the fact that they are meant to strengthen families in each of those cultures. However, in most of the world, family values are about the family in the large view. My family values are much more independent minded than those in the rest of the world. I am looking at my husband and me, as the parents, and our children as one family. Many in the rest of the world think of a patriarch or matriarch and adult siblings who have their children and the addition of assorted other aunts, uncles, and cousins. This is the biggest difference that I could think of in my family values and those of the rest of the world.

Now, I care about my extended family. I am still close to my parents and visit with them often (although we moved away from them to be able to more easily afford a house). I try to keep up with what's going on with my brothers (although I admit most of that is hearsay through my parents and a couple of short visits a year). I am fond of my aunts and uncles and cousins but haven't actually seen very many of them for years since they live on the other side of the country and I don't like to fly (my parents were the ones to move away in their generation). Growing up, my parents made spending time with family including the extended family a priority for us. We went on family vacations for our nuclear family on weekends, especially long holiday weekends. My dad saved up vacation time over two years to drive across country every other year to visit my grandparents and other relatives. When my brothers and I grew up, we didn't move out of our parents' house until our own marriages or an urgent family need arose (a grandparent moving in). I remember several years ago when my Dad was recovering from a bad car accident. He was out of work for a long time recovering and some of his co-workers would occasionally come to see how he was doing. I remember distinctly one man who was originally from India. I was working only part-time at the time and was able to be at home much of the day to help my Dad. This co-worker complimented my Dad on having a traditional family where an adult daughter was at home to take care of him. I'm not sure how traditional we are if you look closely, but on the surface it looked like it. I suspect that my family tends a little more toward the traditional extended family viewpoint than many other American families.

OK, where am I going with all this? I think the point I want to make is that it is useful to give some thought about what you value. Don't just assume that it will work itself out. Life is lived out whether we plan things or not, but with a plan in mind we might actually get where we want to be. What do you want your family to be like? What do you want your children to learn from you? Do you want your grandchildren to value the same things about your family that you do? How can you help that happen? Here in America (and a few other places too) independence is so highly prized that some of our independent choices are tearing families apart. Could it be that we might need to rethink some of those choices to start putting the families back together again?