Friendship school

As I look back over the past four years of motherhood, I see how much my role has expanded from caregiver/nurturer to one of, for better words, a coach. And where this new role has shown itself is in the area of relationships. I believe that this is one of my most important roles as the girl's mother.

That's been reinforced for me as I look back at my own childhood. My own parents had so much on the go with just getting by in life that beyond food, shelter, and education, there wasn't much in the way of emotional intelligence. The only "lesson" that I learned about friends from my own mother was that family trumped friends. Anything I learned, I did so on my own and unfortunately in my younger days, it was a bit of the old school of hard knocks. I'd like to save my own daughter from a few of those knocks!

It's also a priority for us too as we are an "orphan" family here in Toronto. We both have elderly parents thousands of miles away plus not much in way of extended family. So friends for us and for the girl are more than just entertainment.

It has been fascinating to watch the girl make friends. Who knew at 3 1/2 - 4 that you already have or don't have that chemistry with someone else? And my heart just bursts when I am around the girl when she is playing with her close friends. They are so sweet together and enjoy each other's company so much.

Regular playdates have been a powerful teacher for her. It's one thing to do the periodic playdate and something else altogether to get together regularly to play. It's a relationship that develops over the weeks and months. Even at this young age there's a relationship "bank" where you can deposit some goodwill and also make some withdrawals when you are feeling cranky or less open to sharing.

Negotating skills are honed as you need to not only "sell" playing dress-up vs. dolls but have to decide whose imaginary scenario is played. Are we princesses or fairies today? Are you the mommy or the daddy? Who's the baby today? Do I sit in the pink chair or do you? Do we jump on the trampoline now or later? Which book do we look at first?

Emotional self management develops. If you are a crankypants and bossy, you'll find very quickly that it's much harder to make friends. Can you put off getting your way so that you can play at what your friend wants to play? And can you at the same time learn not to be a pushover?

If you don't want to have a playdate, what do you say to your friend that is polite while still getting your point across?

So what has surprised you about your child's friendships? And what have you tried to teach them about making and keeping friends?

I'm not your sweetie anymore

The girl turned four last Sunday.  Four years old.  

We had a small party at our house to celebrate. She had 5 friends over - picked the ones from school and the neighbourhood that she likes to play with.  All girls of course since at age four boys are not allowed! I keep pointing out that Daddy is a boy but he is apparently the exception.

Only one meltdown and it was before the party when the girl found out that one friend was too sick to come.  The six girls played together so well.  Four were dressed up in fancy princess outfits - the other two are not so much into dress up. The girl is such a sweet little hostess, making sure everyone was well fed and watered.

We made the loot bags together ahead of time.  Not the contents but the actual bags - $2 cotton drawstring bags that she stamped with purple fabric paint that I mixed up. Stars and hearts.

The cake had Ariel on it, her favourite princess.  Purple and pink balloons and streamers plus homemade bunting that I made for last year's party and kept. Itunes playlist of primarily latin jazz and salsa plus the welcome addition of the "laydalay" song, otherwise known as "All the Single Ladies" by Beyonce. Hugs goodbye to each of her friends.

Just a sweet, lowkey, and fun party. And a bit of a pang of mommy's heart later on Sunday when the girl informed me that she is no longer my sweetie now that she is four.  She can be my darling girl and my sweetheart girl but not my sweetie because that is for little kids.

She still crawled into bed with us at about 3am for the usual finish of her night's sleep.  She may be four and tall enough to look like five but she still is the cuddliest and yummiest girl ever.

Changing class - the long climb upwards

I have had this post rolling around in my head for a long time. The ideas behind it, even longer. And reading this book over the past few days has been my motivation to start a dialogue on my own experience of changing social classes. 

First the book. If I had seen this book in a store, I most likely would not have picked it up.  I probably would have assumed that it is just another chicklit offering - something for a beach read or an airplane flight but not much more.  Then Laura of 11D recommended it and I picked it up. Well, picked it up from the front entrance of my home once it was delivered from Amazon.

Rhoda, the author, began in a traditional Mennonite home and ended up an academic living on the East Coast of the US. When I say traditional Mennonite, I don't mean lace caps and buggies but I suppose one step above that - conservative socially, religious, and not so surprisingly, anti secondary education.

She writes in an engaging style and finds the humour in reconciling her adult life to her upbringing when she returns home after her husband leaves her for another man and she is injured in a car accident.

I have been fascinated lately with changing social class. How one does it, what it entails, if you can ever really fit in either world. I think it comes up more at this time of year because soon I will be traveling out west to visit my family. I have written before how I live in such a different world than they do. Although my sister and I moved out of the house in our late teens, we went in different directions.  She immediately married, had two girls in rapid succession, and moved to a small farm two hours out of Edmonton. Never went to university. Has barely traveled anywhere. Paid work has consisted primarily of occasional stints as a cashier.

I went to university, then earned a post graduate professional qualification in business. Worked as a consultant, seconded to a political party for two years doing policy analysis, transferred to South Africa for two years. Went back to grad school for an MA, Counselling Psych and a career change.  Had a daughter in the nick of time. Have travelled a lot and plan to do more.

My parents are immigrants. World wars interrupted any hope for a post-secondary education or even completing high school. Over half a century later they haven't really integrated that much into mainstream Canadian culture. Higher education is suspect. Anyone with money is suspect. You are not meant to be too much of anything - too smart, too wealthy, too outspoken. You are not meant to follow your dreams.

And so here I am with a lot of education and by luck of the draw and hard work, some financial rewards too. I am following my dreams to the extent possible. 

I have a foot in both worlds. I don't fit in their world which will be very apparent during my visit with them. Being interested in books or foreign film is seen as showing off. Seen as implying that I believe that I am better than they are. Loving to travel and the arts is seen as showing off too. The topics of conversation are very limited as anything I do, no matter how mundane, is seen as bragging.

And I am reminded that I don't always fit into this new world either. I think that I can pass for the most part but looking back when I was younger, can definitely see how rough around the edges I was socially.  And I am well aware of how much I had to teach myself - the school of hard knocks.  I didn't learn how to be in this new world from home. I had to watch and observe and make mistakes and pick myself up again.  So much social knowledge and class knowledge is transmitted implicitly from your family. If you grow up in an upper class home, that knowledge is picked up around the supper table as parents speak with their children.  Goals and dreams - the idea that you can go after what you want are assumed. Contacts, networks are often taken for granted. 

Anyhow, this has come to mind again as I see my four year old daughter grow up in a class that I never grew up in. She has privileges and enjoys opportunities that I never had. I don't mean just material things but that of course is true. I mean what she picks up just by being. By hearing what we talk about around our supper table, whether it be our careers, our volunteer work, our social values. Hearing and seeing how we navigate our worlds.  

More later...

And as Rhoda did in her book, I am looking at how I grew up in new ways - thinking about what I take from that, how it has formed me, and what I want my daughter to learn from that as well.

Cooking fast but yummy

I am probably the last person on the planet to get on the Mark Bittman bandwagon. What really sold me - 200% sold me - was his NYTimes column 101 Simple Salads this past summer. That column fed us at the cottage that I keep babbling on and on about. Such amazing combinations! (watermelon, feta, black olives, olive oil, red onions, mint?). And easy. Quick. The girl loved them too.

Well, the mail carrier just came and dropped off a hardcover version. Not only salads. (Last summer was picnic food). But 101 recipes by.season. Yes, 404 in total. All yummy goodness.

And you know that this is a legit review as I bought the book with my own shekels.

Counting my sleep chickens before they are hatched

We co-sleep. We're on the attachment parenting end of the scale too. The co-sleeping kinda crept up on us though - it was never an active strategy. More now than earlier too - the girl slept more in her own room as a baby than she does now a few short weeks til she turns 4.

And you know, I like it. I get it. Who wants to sleep alone? 90% of the world sleeps together as a family.

But what I like even more is getting a full night's sleep. For the most part it's been fine - all three of us in our king size bed. It's fine if we are all vertical. Add in an almost four year old who is as tall as a five year old sleeping horizontal - not so good. She might have the cutest toes but not when they are attached to feet kicking Mamalooper in the head.

Had the great strategy - the POSITIVE reinforcement. Bag full of toys to pick from if she stays in her bed til 7 am. And it worked, my friends, it worked. For.one.night. Monday night was brilliant - all three of us were nauseatingly perky and full of energy Tuesday morning.

Tuesday night - a BIG bust. We had the tears. We had the "I don't want to be alone". We had the four times up coming to wake us up.

I am cranky. And tired. And fuzzy-headed. Not the funnest Mamalooper around. Even annoying myself. So back to cosleeping again for the duration. At least it'll mean more sleep than last night.

So as I slurp my HUGE 'bucks coffee...do you co-sleep? Any plans to change that? If so, what are they?

Big lights will inspire you...

Watch this - it is EXCELLENT. As an aside, I have a huge amount of respect for Jay Z and Beyonce. They came from nothing, worked their a**es off and deserve all the success they have. Talk about being focused on their dreams. I imagine that they have a "plan" and that they are executing that plan step by step. Inspiring, no matter your own dream.






And I love NYC too. When I was 12 I thought I'd be a lawyer and live in New York City. Never actually visited til I was 30 but I am there at least once a year now. Theatre, food, museums, galleries, just.walking.around. The energy is incredible.

I am no longer an ebay virgin

As you know, I am the lucky, so v. v. lucky, I can't believe it's true, people like me (i.e. working class roots) don't do this OWNER of a cottage. With some additional luck, it was actually decorated in a reasonable not-too-many-ducks/no-basement-smelly-couches kind of way. Only had to toss a few tchochkes. And the previous owners took the duck base lamp.

But I DID want a new chair or two to sit on. It came with some olden days rockers that were not even remotely comfortable. I know the idea of a cottage is a receptacle for cast-offs but I do want to at least have somewhere comfy to sit.

So the trolling of ebay began. And since I am a sheep, I was trolling mid-century modern chairs. Found one. Made a few bids. And had bought it before I realised what happened. Two months later of back and forth on the shipping plus a stern email or two and I woke up this morning to the chair on my doorstep.

Here it is in my home office. Our cottage is three season so it'll be moved there in the spring. It makes me very happy. I can be shallow like that.

You can't say you can't play

[Apparently I have returned but am not so frequent.]


I came across a book entitled the above by a woman named Vivan Gussin Paley. Her premise is that rather than toughening kids up for being excluded at some point, we should make it a policy/teach them the opposite - that "you can't say you can't play".

The girl's JK has the same policy and is teaching the kids that if someone wants to play with you, you figure out how they can join in.

Now it is starting to get tricky with parties - birthday and otherwise. Last year in nursery school most of the parents invited the entire class to their kid's birthday party. Pretty lowkey for the most part - rent a school gym, bake a homemade cake, bowls of chips, and a simple dollar store lootbag. [As an aside, that is one of the many things that I love about the girl's school - although it is private and some of the families are quite well off, you'd never know it from the parties.]

This year, most are having smaller at-home parties, us included. The girl turns four in a few weeks and we are having 6 other girls over for a small party. She and I made the loot bag bags ($2 drawsstring cotton bags that she decorated by stamping). We'll also bring some treats to school near her birthday for the kids in the class to have.

Some parents hosted after school Halloween parties and another this week hosted an after school pajama party. We're talking 20-30 kids. Here's the tricky part. A few kids were excluded from the Halloween party invite and the girl and a few others were excluded from the pajama party invite. Ouch for them. Luckily the girl wasn't aware of her exclusion. The boy excluded from the Halloween party was excluded and his feelings were pretty hurt.

So what to do internets? Should the social exclusion start this early? You can see what side of the fence I am on - if you are doing a big bash, invite them all or none. They can't keep it quiet at school and feelings are getting hurt.

And this is an age when they are starting to sort out the friend thing - especially the girls. Who is and who isn't a friend? Can you be my friend and her friend too? What kind of lesson are the hosting parents teaching their kids when they are allowed to exclude some classmates?