raise my son so he isn't a suburban cliche

is that this mean he takes responsibility for what he needs to do. The dynamic of I (or S and I) nagging/reminding/working to motivate him to do things, and him avoiding/whining/”forgetting” and so on is bad for everyone.

S’s boss left for another position recently, and they’re examining what qualities/skills they want in his replacement. A person closely involved with the hiring process was pushing S to take? try for? the job, and he was discouraging the idea to her. There’s an area in which he doesn’t have credentials that would make some colleagues oppose the promotion, but in addition, it’s a high level job that would demand almost all of his time, and that wouldn’t make us happy.

We were discussing this at dinner, and unprompted, E said that it was more important to have time together than more money.

Yay.

It’s a big priority for me to help E feel that working to make the world a better place is a natural part of life. In scouts, he does some of that. At church, we do some, too (usually by donating to the food basket each week and responding to “drives” for this or that). At school we always contribute to things (food drives, school supplies for homeless kids, and so on). But just giving canned goods or whatever barely registers on his radar screen, I think.

So I was delighted when a notice came home from school about a club where kids work to choose charities (after researching them) and then work to support them (in different ways depending on the needs of the charity they choose). I signed E right up, and since parents are welcome too and he asked if I would, I will join with him. First meeting is next week.

When my parents went to a parent-teacher conference when I was in 3rd grade, the teacher had only one complaint: I read too much. I would hide a book below my desk and slide it out enough to read it during class. Class was slow and boring! My parents just laughed. I love how their reaction made me feel (and that they told me!)

In E’s second-grade class, they are told to keep a book in their desk, so if they finish something and other children are still working, they can read. Well, apparently E reads too much. :) When S arrived at school yesterday to chaperone a field trip, he was chitchatting with one of the aides, who told him E often reads when he’s not supposed to. I guess they tell him, “It’s great that you’re reading, but now we’re doing XYZ.” When S told me this over dinner, I just laughed.

That’s my kid!

Poor kid. He’s forced to deal with some really grownup stuff too soon.

He’s dealt with 3 major deaths in the past year—my mother, S’s grandfather, and the fiancee of S’s friend M. He didn’t know the last person, but it’s been a major sadness for us, so it has loomed large in his mind.

While in FL, we spent half the time at Disney theme parks, but then spent the second half of the week packing S’s grandmother’s condo with her. Since she’s now widowed, she’s moving north year round, to live in S’s mom’s town where her summer home is. For E, this meant that the second half of his vacation was largely spent sitting around filling time in someone else’s house while the grownups were busy. We’d squeeze in a some fun here and there, but I have to admit it was more a demonstration in being selflessly helpful to the people you love than a vacation for that part of the week. I must say, he didn’t complain about it. Being exhausted from Disney probably helped! As did extra TV and Nintendo DS time—much more per day than is the norm.

What really struck me though, was last night when S was again mentioning some nagging lower-back pain, and E suddenly looked tearful and scared and wondered aloud if S would die suddenly, like Popa did (S’s grandfather).

Oh, boy, we need to lighten this kid’s life up. There’s too much heavy stuff in it. This isn’t how I want him to have more character and depth. I want his soul to be a rich tapestry, not something marked with scars.

I spend a lot of time worrying about E being spoiled. I know he is given too much. I don’t think he’s expected to do enough (chores, I mean). And while I try hard to nip it in the bud, there’s a little attitude of entitlement here and there.

But Saturday night, he made me feel like S and I are doing something right. All day we worked like dogs, cleaning, decorating, making food. We were preparing for E’s birthday party (a family party). He was a reasonably good helper, and cleaned up things that he played with, with little to no prompting, but basically his dad and I did mountains of work to get ready for the party and he just amused himself nearby. Then the party happened, and it was fun, and we were all happy. And then we said goodbye to people as they departed, coaching E to say, “Thank you for coming.” and that sort of thing.

And then, we were alone. And this is what makes me so happy: E pulled on the two of us until we were with him in a “family hug” in the middle of the kitchen, and thanked us for working so hard to make a party for him. Oh. My. God. That right there, little boy? That made it all worth it.

Another thing he said as we tucked him into bed neither makes me proud nor ashamed, but absolutely makes me feel like, “Yup, that’s my kid!” He said that it’s nice to have the rest of our family come over, but afterward it’s nice to have it be just our own little family again. Oh, I couldn’t agree more, little guy!

Today E got a crew cut. I hate it. I don’t like crew cuts on anyone, let alone my little towhead.

I didn’t tell him I hate it, though I did say I miss his hair. I think he felt insecure about me not being really positive and enthusiastic, though. I usually am, about everything. He relaxed more once I joked around a little with him.

Many of the little boys he knows have crew cuts. Though many don’t. So it could be just following the crowd, or not.

But beforehand, I kept asking if he was sure, and saying I didn’t want his hair to go away. So that probably made him want to do it more, as a really safe way to make an independent choice. I hope it is a (tiny bit of) practice that will help him develop the strength to go his own way later in life. Like me, he may be a bit too much of an approval seeker.

Also, he doesn’t ask for much regarding his appearance. Given a choice, he might have a slight preference for one logo/picture on a t-shirt over another, he does have a favorite color, and chooses his own sneakers. But mostly he doesn’t care; he just wears whatever I buy and put out. So when he actually wants to control how he looks in some way, how can I not let him be his own person?

In 10 years, when he does something way less conventional, I’ll look back at this and wonder what the heck my problem was. But this is as hard as when I cut off his baby curls.

and it’s a good reminder for me to think about what I do and don’t want for him.

This is a “find out what I think by writing it” entry.

We live in a wealthy community. There are tons of opportunities to help the less fortunate, and we respond to them. At least once a month, if not more, there’s a food drive, or collection of mittens, or of grocery store points, or whatever, at E’s school. Many community events have an “entrance fee” of a canned food item for the food pantry. There’s a basket at the entrance of our church for food donations every Sunday. We’re taking a tag or two off the Giving Tree that will appear there this weekend. At S’s work, there are toy drives and food drives and etc. By participating in all these things, we’re certainly showing E that it’s important to help others, and that’s an important quality I’d like him to have. I don’t want him to be selfish.

But, oh! Last week he forgot to hand in the canned food item I sent with him on a spirit day. I scolded him a bit when I found it still in his backpack when he got home, saying, “Oh E! That was for the poor people!” And then I wanted to bite my tongue off. I usually describe the reasons for people needing food assistance in a gentler and more convoluted way. I mean, I do convey clearly that the families don’t have enough money for all the things they need, but I try to do so in a “we’re all in this together” kind of way. I was horrified when I heard myself refer to them as “the poor people” because that sounded like they were so different from us.

But really, there’s so much that is chance. Working for a company that goes under. Having a costly health crisis. Lacking a family/friend support system to help out in a pinch with free childcare, with loans, with hand-me-downs…any or all of these things and more are factors and bad things can happen to anyone.

So. I don’t want him to think that poverty is a given for some set of people or is something that only happens outside of the world he inhabits. Hmmm. I don’t want to probe too far into chances to help with poverty assistance programs in our own town, because of the chance of embarrassing some kid he might later meet up with in school or someplace. But taking him farther afield might only reinforce the idea that it happens only to other people, elsewhere.

Maybe for a first step, just some conversations to reinforce the idea that these things we do generally benefit people right here in town, and to introduce the idea of anonymity protecting privacy and helping people to keep their pride, to avoid being embarassed. The Giving Tree tags will probably be a good way to bring this up, since we’ll be seeing just first names, ages, and wishes.

Today, I am going to try to work up the nerve to call a baby-sitter. This scares me for two reasons: One, we’ve never left E with a baby-sitter. Only family, or daycare or day camp. Never some teenage girl. Two, I hate the phone. Just irrationally hate it and avoid talking to people on it. I think my shyness is compounded by not being able to see facial expressions or something.

Anyway, we’ve been talking for probably two years about hiring this girl who lives diagonally across the street. Her grandmother told us, two different times, that the girl would be interested. We acted interested. Then we never did anything. Finally, around June, I was weeding in the front yard when she got off the bus, and I got her phone number.

With S’s promotion, our financial picture will be a less tight, and we’d like to try to have a standing arrangement in which we get one night out a month. Since E’s birth, we’ve maybe gotten one a year. So calling this girl is our first step toward that.

We’re going to start by asking her to come over one afternoon this weekend, if she’s free, and just hang out with E so they can get to know each other, while we do some big household project (like cleaning the basement) without him underfoot. That’s the plan, anyway, so that leaving him at night won’t be the first time. Just need to make the call.

E will be 7 in a couple weeks. Having a neighborhood girl for a baby-sitter strikes me as a suburban cliche, but in a harmless way. Plus, waiting until he’s this old is probably unusual.