It's the little things

I spotted it as I headed out for a walk.
And I smiled with delight.

There, in the lawn between the sidewalk and our front yard, it stood, proudly swaying in the breeze.
And I felt a surge of pure joy.

My house sits on a small hill which made mowing difficult, so in the years since we moved in we've slowly been seeding the entire front hill with perennials - cone flowers, black-eyed Susans, day-lilies. It's kind of wild and overgrown most of the time, but I love its riotous disorder, the birds and butterflies it attracts, and reducing the need to mow.

But try as I might, my husband has refused to pull up the grass in that space and plant it to flowers instead.

So imagine my utter delight when I spied the small black-eyed-Susan bobbing merrily smack-dab in the middle of this space. I could hardly wait to tell him how happy it made me that not only had the flowers seeded themselves there, but that he hadn't mowed them down.

It almost makes up for the time several years ago when I discovered he had systematically killed all the volunteer morning glories sprouting throughout the yard.

Almost.

I'm not sure whether this signals a true change of heart on his part or a simple, single gesture of love. Time will tell.

But I'm hopeful the crazy profusion of flowers will slowly spread and eliminate the need for mowing entirely. Even if it only happens one-seed at a time.

Stigma

So I came across a piece of writing a few weeks ago that upset me quite a bit.
Someone was extolling his at-home do-it-yourself treatment of his child's near-crippling anxiety disorder and declared it a success. Apparently it was successful primarily because this was "accomplished' without "labeling" the child with an official diagnosis.
The parent read a bunch of books on OCD and anxiety and used the cognitive behavioral therapy techniques described in them.

I just don't get this whole idea that a diagnosis equals a "label" of some sort that is harmful to the child. Any diagnosis I've ever received, for myself or for my children, has been a huge relief. A relief, that is, coupled with appropriate medical care.
No one worries about "labeling" a child with diabetes, or a a birth defect, or any of potentially thousands of other diseases or genetic conditions. What makes a diagnosis of mental illness or learning disability somehow detrimental?
I get that there is stigma. I have three children with severe anxiety disorders and suffer from depression and anxiety myself. As first one, then another, then the third of my children became unable to function without professional help; I had to confront my own hesitance to be open about our diagnoses.
I worried about what people might think. I tried to rationalize my way out of my own need for therapy. Through this I realized that for me children to understand there was nothing shameful about mental illness I had to be as open and honest with them and with the world as possible.

The only way to combat stigma is to confront it head on. When my children were first diagnosed, along with the despair and worry and fear of the unknown, came information, help for them and for myself, and treatment. Treatment that, frankly, allowed my children to make it to adulthood.

Then we were hit with the diagnosis of a genetic defect. Again, there was fear and worry, but also the relief of finally understanding the root cause of the symptoms we suffered, knowledge of the treatments, and help to manage the illness in the years to come. Did this "labeling" of the symptoms we suffered - pain, fatigue, gastrointestinal issues, etc. - somehow impinge on our feelings of self-worth or cause others' to cringe a little? Of course not.

I guess success for some might equate to continued sheltering of the child throughout adulthood, but that doesn't seem to be a whole life to me. Learning to cope and perhaps to overcome learning disabilities, sensory issues, and mental illnesses is essential to living a whole, full, independent life.
My adult children still struggle with their various illnesses and will their whole lives. But the tools they learned in therapy and the medications they take allow them to live full, whole, unsheltered lives.
Had I chosen to pretend that I could keep them in a cocoon of protection in which they never had to face the world what kind of lives might they have now? What kind of life would I have?
Don't be afraid of a diagnosis.
If you are, please face your own biases and fears about mental illness and don't pass them on to your child. There is no shame in diagnosis, no shame in taking medication, no shame in seeking help to deal with a mental illness. Hiding behind the false wall of "labeling"will only delay the help your child needs and will pass on the very stigma you are afraid of.
Burying your head in the sand won't help anyone; least of all your child.

Contortionist

Yesterday I was reminded of one of my mothering failures.
I saw a photo of a mom baby-wearing not just one of her children, but two. One in front, one in back. Holy cow! Talk about Supermom.
This amazingly beautiful photo took me way back to my early years of motherhood. A little more than 26 years ago, my second son was born.
He was a sturdy little guy, weighing 8 lbs.13 ounces at birth. He was in the 99th percentile for height and weight all through his infancy, quite a change from my firstborn who was always 99th percentile for height but barely made it to 50th percentile for weight.
I remember dressing my second-born in his brother's hand-me-downs and not being able to snap the top snaps!
So, as the mother of a toddler (2 years old) and an infant, I figured I'd give baby-wearing a try. I bought a sling, of sorts, but couldn't get the hang of it - and Zachary hated it!
We also had a backpack-type carrier my sister had given us, so one day I decided to try it out on our daily walk to the mailboxes.
We lived in graduate student housing in Lewes, Delaware, where my husband was working on a postdoctoral fellowship.
If you've never been to the Delaware coast, be forewarned; it's hot and humid as all get-out, there are slugs everywhere, and every outdoor adventure is accompanied by clouds of mosquitoes.
At least it was that way in 1990.
So, first of all, I had to figure out how to get my 4-month-old into the carrier. I'm really tall and nothing in the house was high enough to lay him on with enough support while I lifted the contraption onto my shoulders.
Somehow, the three of us ended up in the front yard. I had a blanket on the grass and decided to lay the baby in the backpack carrier down there and from a kneeling position hoist him onto my back.
Now, Zachary wasn't a tiny little guy, as mentioned above. By his two week checkup he weighed more than 10 lbs., and by 4 months he approached 20.
I am not a particularly strong person, and while I had a lot more stamina then than now, hefting my baby onto my back was almost more than I could manage. He also was only 4 months old at the time, and I couldn't really swing him around safely.
I also had problems with back pain, which coincidentally started when he was born.
Hmm.
I know now that my ehlers danlos factored heavily into my pain and weakness, but at the time I was unaware.
All I knew was that I had this 20-pound baby on my back and we had about a quarter mile walk to the housing complex mail boxes.
That doesn't seem very far, but I also had a 2-year-old. Walking to the mailbox was one of the highlights of his day and could take 30 minutes or more as we picked every dandelion, examined every crack in the sidewalk, and were generally amazed with everything in sight.
Don't get me wrong, I loved seeing the world through his eyes, but the weight of the baby pulled heavily on my back, I was sweating, and my patience was put to the test.
Somehow we made it there and began the trek back to our unit.
Slowly.
Carefully.
And with amazement at the world.
I grew sweatier by the minute.
As we got closer to that blanket on the lawn, all I could think of was getting the baby off my aching  back.
Finally as we neared home I realized I had no idea how to get the backpack contraption off while still protecting the baby's head. I didn't have the strength to kneel and swing it off one strap at a time. What was I going to do?
Thankfully, I was the only stay-at-home mom there and no one was around during typical work hours.
I managed to get down to my knees, then carefully onto my side, and roll onto my back without jostling or squishing the baby - in a somewhat modified back bend. I then wriggled one arm out of the strap, lowering the baby carefully to the blanket on the grass.
And that, my friends, was the end of my baby-wearing experience.
Instead I became adept at the centuries old baby-on-the-hip method.

Oh, and by-the-way, that baby is now 6 feet 7 inches tall.
And my back still hurts.