Day 12: Fathers (Part 1)

More and more in our society, especially with the rise of divorce, we are finding single moms raising their children. As a mother, I am proud to see the single moms that are out there doing all they can to offer their children the best opportunities. But still, it is a tragedy. Too often, the role of the father in their children's lives is ignored or simply absent entirely. As a woman, I agree that mothers are strong, and can do so much for their children (often more than they though possible), but we cannot neglect that there is a gaping vacuum when fathers are not in the picture. And fathers should not forgo the opportunity to offer their children the things that only they can provide in their unique way. It's just different, coming from a father. I don't think this is just my own opinion. Research can support the impact of a father's genuine involvement in their children's lives.

Their "serious" looks... except, much angrier looking.

Did you know that a father’s involvement in their home directly impacts the likelihood of abuse their children may experience in their household? Compared to their peers living with both parents, children in single parent homes are, overall, a 120% percent greater risk of being endangered by some type of child abuse. It could be said that single mothers often have to work harder and longer than mothers of children living with two parents, and this leaves their children more exposed to abuse at the hands of others, or even become abusive due to the constant emotional and physical stress that may occur. So how can father’s involvement in their home make a difference? Well in my experience, it’s not just having someone to hand off the dirty diapers to while I grab a new one. This can look different in every home, but in whichever scenario, a father’s involvement is one to be valued.

In my own home, my husband and I have pretty traditional roles. While we have both taken turns as breadwinners in our family to accomplish our family’s united goals, I’ve naturally taken on the role of cook, housecleaner, and diaper changer. My husband Orlando has naturally taken on the role of budgeter, vision caster, entertainer (with the kids), and order keeper (very necessary in our rowdy female household). These roles were not forced on us, but it was of our own choosing, much of it by trial and error, and by learning our strengths and how we best compliment each other in this team that is our family. Each a different role, each just as important and valuable, each with a voice.

 

Nonetheless, there were many times where I felt I was doing the parenting alone. My husband is a filmmaker and business owner, and while our littles were even teenier than they are now, he was also going to school full time. And often taking on other part time jobs. I felt like I changed ALL the diapers, soothed EVERY booboo, managed EVERY bedtime. Of course, this was not entirely true, but in my sleep-deprived, confused, and overwhelmed new motherly state, I felt it was all on me. It was hard to appreciate the role of a father sometimes, because I felt that role was supposed to look like a duplicate mother: another individual who offered the exact same role as I did. Of course, with our schedules and family needs, my husband (in his own sleep-deprived, overworked, and overwhelmed new fatherly state) simply could not meet that, could not be that. And truth-be-told, he was not created to be another me. He needed to be himself for his children. I had to learn this, and I have, over time. 

Fathers meet a unique role in a family structure – the role of support to the mother and father to their children. My husband has always had a soothing and calming effect on us crazed Gomez girls. I am usually all over the place, and at the end of the day, I needed someone to piece me back together again. Orlando was exactly that. Like even the other day, we had one of the most stressful days that we’ve had in a very long time. By the end of the evening, I was struggling to hold on to the “cool” that I had during the day, and my grasp on “calm” was all but gone. In the middle of it all, Orlando got my attention and simply said, “You’re ok.” And suddenly I was.  And he has that same effect on my daughters. In the middle of one of their breakdowns, I could do nothing it seems to calm them. Then, he could step in, offer a few short words, and suddenly life is fine again. It’s magic.

 

I know that I am personally a better mother, and a better person, because of my husband’s support to me as a mother, and watching him be a father to my children. He has a special role he plays in their lives that I could never fill in the same way.

My next blog will discuss ways in which a father’s parenting role not only looks often different from a mother’s, but also how these different ways of interacting with children offer huge benefits to their present and future well being. Be sure to look out for the next one!

Day 11: Focused Forward

Brief little blog today. A little poem for my readers.

FOCUSED FORWARD

Focused forward

On what is to come

I can't lose sight of the goal.

My hopes. My dreams.

In droves they come,

And seek to take control.

Pressing onward

Careful footing

Hoping not to fall

Often fearful

Sometimes tearful

By the weight of it all

Darkness comes

Vision's gone

I stumble forward slow

Take my hand

And lead the way

Where you go, I'll go

By Adriana Gomez

6/26/15 @ 12:07am

Day 10: Credit Card Art

My mom found a great tutorial online on how to paint with a credit card, and thought she'd use it to do a little art project/lesson with the girls (Ember, age 3, and Selah, age 5). They loved it! I layed out the color on the paint sheets to match the ones on the video tutorial, and they started out by painting greens and yellows with the card. Then, they used a brush and thread (yes, a spool of thread!) for the flowers. Here's the link, followed by some photos I took.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBnxmj1cWnA

 

 

   

These are the final results! Ember's on the left, and Selah's on the right. Give it a try! It was fun! We'll do this one again, for sure!

Day 9: Help Them Be Heard

"Where words fail, music speaks." - Hans Christian Anderson

Children learn to speak when they are two years old, right? No, in fact, even in utero. Children are listening but to speech, to the cadence in our voice. The highs, the lows, the emotions. And children learn to read and write in kindergarten, right? Preschool maybe? No again! Even in their first months of life, they are sponges, picking up language faster in their first two years of life then anytime afterwards. They are listening to the stories you read, watching you flip the pages as they learn the concepts of print and that those squiggly lines and symbols mean something.

It is the same with the language of music. In the first couple years of life, infants hear the soothing vibrations on your chest as they hear you sing while you rock them to sleep. They coo and explore different sounds with their voice. They clap and bang things to explore the sounds they make. They move to the music we play. And if they see music in print, they learn that those notes and symbols mean something. Just like letters and words. 

So why do we wait until children are in third or fourth grade to introduce them to music lessons? Would we wait until kids are in kindergarten to speak And read to them? To show them their first story or picture book when they're six? Why do we start them so young? Because the early years count!

The more languages children have to express themselves, the easier it will be for them to feel confident voicing their thoughts, being creative, and be able to process their emotions and thoughts. What do we do when we can't talk about things? Don't give your kids an excuse to drown their thoughts with whatever is at their disposal. Give them the arts as an alternative to words. 

I end my little soap box spiel with a short video of a typical piano lesson I have with my daughter. Both my three and five year old love these lessons, and love music even more as a result. They often write their own songs, unafraid to tell their own stories through music, without the fear of it having to "sound right." 

http://youtu.be/65W7eFahye8

Hans Christian Anderson was right. Let their music or dance or art speak for them when their words cannot. Help them be heard.

Day 8: Finding the Solutions

"For every problem there's a solution."

This is a popular phrase in my household. My daughter, while she is very innovative and creative in her work, is also quite the perfectionist. She imagines how she wants her art to look, and if anything goes off, a mispelled word, a line out of place, tape stuck on the wrong spot, it throws her into a world of frustration that is difficult to pull her out of. We have step back and calm down songs and activities at home that we sing often and she knows well, but in that state of frustration, she has zero intention of using. She is upset and doesn't want to be calmed down.

Does this sound familiar? It does to me. Often when I am angry or frustrated, I not only find myself rejecting consolation, but there is a stubbornness that is in my nature to wallow in my vexation and my failure and letting my mind drift to my own little frustrated world. 

Knowing this, I know that it's not what I want for my daughter. I know I can't make her want to calm down, but I first start by attempting to validate her frustrations. Often times we punish kids for being mad, as though the emotion itself were a sin. I believe it's more what actions we choose to take and attitude we choose to have in a situation are more the issue than the emotions we struggle through. There is a time for sadness, anger, happiness. The key comes in teaching children how to respond to the feelings they are having and how to cope and self regulate... Often easier said than done, but I think that should be the goal and intent of our interventions.

I found a wonderful book at our local library: 

"I Had a Favorite Dress" by Boni Ashburn. It told a beautiful story of a fashionable, little girl with a mother who could sew. When her dress no longer fit, she began to freak out, and her mother told her not to make mountains out of molehills, and changed her dress into another article of clothing. From a dress, to a shirt, down to a hair bow, the girl learned that there could be a solution to everything.

Fast forward to this morning. It's Fathers Day, and my husband was volunteering at church, so we stayed for two services. During the in between times, my daughter had a potty accident, and she had just transitioned back to underwear so I had no spare clothing. I was unprepared. We were supposed to take pictures. We were supposed to go straight to a family gathering right after service. What could she possibly wear?

I was confident it wasn't the end of the world, and promptly took my daughter to the car, where I grabbed a blanket (my first solution), and took her to the bathroom. 

Before I could get there, I noticed a booth selling t-shirts. Eureka! If they had a small, I could make this work (She still wears 18-24 mo. clothing)! No luck. Medium in men's is as small as it went. I bought one anyway, and improvised. My blouse made a great dress on her. I tied the back with the rubber band that came with the shirt, which I now wore. And would you guess, most people didn't even notice the wardrobe change, and thought my daughter's "dress" looked so cute on her! #score! 

So while my oldest daughter still has her moments (as do I), we can remind ourselves that there truly can be a solution to every challenge, if we are open to it. I'm trying to be. Are you?

Day 7: Let them Create

I like TV. I love staying up far too late to watch Netflix with my hubby (the new "Daredevil" series is pretty awesome). I love sitting with my kids and watching Wild Kratts and Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood. What I don't want, however, is for the summer to be filled with my kids sitting in front of the television due to boredom.

Entering our first real "summer vacation" now that Selah finished kindergarten, I wasn't sure what to expect. Sure, I run my family child care and that would fill up much of my week with them with activities and things to do, but still. Would I have to hold my ground and set stricter technology rules for their personal down time? Would I have to plan additional things for them to do, on top of the activities I already plan for my daily child care program?

Well it's a good thing I've always encouraged and been a proponent of free, open-ended art and play. No activity sheets, no craft instructions. Just materials, tools, and something to inspire them. It hasn't been long, but I am so excited about how my daughter has chosen to spend her own time. Lots and lots of creating.

I have started a collection of recyclable materials. While sometimes my husband and I cringe at how much "junk" we are collecting, I keep it to only what fits in the tub. So long as my daughter has tape (lots of it), she will spend hours creating.

Purses. Treasure chests. Televisions. Books. Car seats with seat belts and steering wheels. Robots and butterflies.

Beats a cable bill and bored kids! It's not too hard to create an art space for your kids. I had a donated plastic floor mat from a local office to protect the floor. I shopped thrift stores for filers for the construction paper and mostly recycled paper (kids usually don't care if their paper is blank on both sides or if one side has an advertisement for lawn service). Some other things I keep handy are glue, empty cups, string (old shoe laces, for example, or bits of yarn), bottle tops, old hair ties that don't work well anymore... Really it's whatever is accessible to you and is safe for kids to use.

So here's to many hours of art and inventiveness and creativity spent this summer. Cheers!

P.S. Yes it can get messy, but I will check on my daughters at different points to remind them to clean along the way, so it's not too hard at the end. Hope that helps!

Day 6: Be a cheerleader.

Day 6. Not even a week and I realize how difficult it is to be consistent in blogging. It didn't take long for me to skip a day (yesterday). And the hardest thing about coming up with things to write about is I'm not exactly sure the direction I want to take my blog. I'm sure I'm not the first blogger to experience this, but I am hoping that one of the things I gain in these 100 days of blogging is a sense of direction.

Well enough about myself. Today I would rather talk about something I'm passionate about, and that is children and the arts.

I recently read a disturbing article (http://fightthenewdrug.org/growing-up-fast-why-12-year-old-girls-are-having-sex-rougher-earlier/) of the realities that children grow up facing in the world today, particularly revolving around pornography and all the ways that it has influenced our children and adolescents in our current times, with technology being so accessible as it is. I spent a great deal of time digesting that article and discussing with my husband my thoughts on the matter.

Truth be told, there is definitely a part of me that wants to lock my doors and shut out that part of the world, but that is no way to live. I got to thinking, how do children grow up with the strength to say no to all these new drugs, addictions, and pressures all around them. 

My short answer is confidence, relationships, and a talent. Many children give into peer pressure because they don't believe in themselves and have low self-esteem. Often, it's because they lack the solid foundation of strong relationships with mothers, fathers, and other family/community members that help them define who they are rather than letting their peers define it for them, for better or for worse (usually for worse).

Finally, many kids grow up feeling like they lack a talent. They're not good at anything. They don't volunteer or get involved anywhere because they don't feel they can do it. All children are artists, until they tell themselves they're not, and give up trying. This usually happens around 3rd or 4th grade. 

While the arts won't solve all the worlds problems, I believe it is a bridge to helping children find the confidence they need to feel like they've got something special, something that's worth more that what the world is offering them, so much that they're willing to turn those things down. All those movies about kids choosing dance or music or art over gangs and drugs and such, these stories are based out of reality.

My husband teaches film to high school students, many coming out of the juvenile justice system. Through his class, he has had countless opportunities to talk with these students about life, and allowing them to tell their stories - often time giving them an opportunity to step back and see it at a distance to evaluate where they are and the choices they need to make to get to where they really want to go.

Parents, families, communities, I beseech you to find the children and teenagers that you have influence over. Build relationships with them. Encourage them. Help them find their talents and foster that. Don't let them give up on it. Remind them of their worth and remind them to let go of anyone or anything that will only bring them down. As my husband told me the other day. We all need a circle of cheerleaders in our lives. 

Be a cheerleader today.