Kelly the Overthinker, Author at My Overthinking

A good mother knows {not} the words her child cannot say

9.7.14

Pinterest.

Tell me all about how great it is for finding just what you want and for keeping track of ideas. Yeah. I’ve heard it.

But, Pinterest often equates to I’m-not-like-the-rest/I’m-not-the-best.

Not far from the Lego minifigure party favors and the dress you can make out of your husband’s old shirt is a charm necklace deemed beautiful and widely shared with this quote:

Go ahead, pin it with the rest of them.

Perhaps some women are inspired by that and get warm fuzzies. Me? Not so much.

I’m not really thinking that I want to wear those words around my neck as a reminder that I am not actually a good mother because a lot of the time, I simply do not know the words my children cannot say. In fact, I’d venture to say that most of the time I do not know the words my children cannot say. I’m not saying I don’t want to. But, my children are a bit of an enigma. I mean, they’re people you know, just smaller people. They are complex and process experiences every moment in ways that are different than I do. They feel things different than I do. Just when I think I may be catching on to a pattern and I’m getting them and I’m feeling like I need to wear a red t-shirt with #awesomemom on the back, they change. Just like that, they change. And, those words they weren’t saying that I thought I was hearing are…pouf…a mystery again and I’m still wearing my all-family-coordinating Mickey Mouse shirt…by myself.

If I could wear a charm with this and convince myself that it was somehow inspiring, I’m pretty sure that it would serve as a great tool to create distance and discord with my children in a few years. While my boys may think the idea of their mother as a mindreader sounds deserving of a tshirt itself (“#mindreader. Yes, I know what you’re thinking right now” on a grey tee), all I can hear in my head in a shrill teenagery voice are the words, “you think you know everything!” “You don’t understand me!” “Why do you think you have me all figured out?”

Good moms don’t always know the words their children cannot say. Good moms don’t always even know the words their children can say. Good moms know they don’t have their children all figured out and that they never fully will, and good moms keep going anyway. That’s what good moms do.

Progress {TBT}

9.4.14

Originally posted 2 years ago in June of 2012…thought I’d share again for TBT while my baby has progressed all the way to kindergarten…

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God has a way of moving at just the right time, doesn’t He?

Just as we started our course to teach the Empowered to Connect parenting material to other parents, Lydia stepped it up.

The yelling. The hitting. The going from 0-60 in seconds. Throw in a bite or two, and that’s been our world for the last month.

Plenty of opportunities to practice what we’re learning. And, that we have.
Giving her the words to use (“I can see you are mad. That makes you super mad, doesn’t it?”… “You don’t like when I do that, do you? You can tell me that.”).

Giving her the redos (“Wait a minute. What don’t you try that again.”).

And, giving her a stop sign when warranted (“Lydia, you need to stop that right now, and use words that we can understand!”

We have so much to learn.

A few days ago, my invitation to get in the bath wasn’t accepted, and she was angry. She looked right into my eyes, bent over with her arms flung back, and yelled out, “I…want…to…hit you!”

“Thank you for using your words! Good job!”

She still had to get in the bath. But, she got some praise and a hug first which unnerved her enough that the anger dissipated.

And, yesterday, she snagged something right out of Mark’s hands with a “Let I have dat!” Mark simply looked at her with a message she clearly got, and she handed it back and said, “Let I try that again,” and then asked for it.

Progress.

And, today, as Mama went out to breakfast with some other adoptive mamas (a breakfast that didn’t bring me home until 2pm), she soaked up time with Daddy, asking to be held “like a baby” and falling asleep in his arms for 25 minutes. Tonight, she wanted him to feed her her bottle, and she laid close to his chest while he held it for her.

Learning to use words. Redos.

Progress.

her first day of kindergarten {my baby is a little girl}

8.27.14

We had a lot of late night conversations the months after Drew was born. I wanted to adopt. Mark didn’t feel the same. He wasn’t opposed to adoption; he’s sort of…well…more like opposed to noise and chaos. A man who enjoys peace and quiet who has a needy 4 year old, an independent 2 year old, a still-unfolding-from-the-womb infant, and a wife talking about adopting a fourth child = noise and chaos in every way.

Many of those conversations ended with me saying this:

I’m afraid that if we don’t do it, we’ll regret it the rest of our lives. I know that when we put her on the bus for kindergarten, we’ll look at her and say, ‘I’m so glad we did it.’

I don’t really know why that particular image equaled the image of parental contentment and joy for me. At the time I was speaking those words and imagining the day, I had not yet put even one child on a school bus. I think I identified that moment as a new chapter, when my baby would leave the season of babyhood and become a little girl, when my role as mother would not be over by any means or even get any easier but it would change dramatically. No longer would I be essentially the only influence in her little life; now, I would have to coach her to use discernment with other influences.

I clung to that image of a blurred dark haired little girl climbing bus stairs too big for her and wearing a backpack that extended beyond her shoulders through our process of saying yes to adoption and eventually yes to her specifically. Over the last four years, that image remained a blur until this week.

This week, my baby put on a quientessential kindergarten dress with blue mary janes. She asked for two braids, one on each side. She put on a backpack extending beyond her tiny frame full of sharpened Dixon Ticonderoga pencils, fresh crayons, and classroom tissues. And, she stepped outside for a new adventure.

She said she wasn’t nervous, only “cited.” She played the part, smiling big for the camera at the bus stop where moms and dads took pictures of their children too.

And, then we gathered around her to pray for her. And, she got a little more serious. And, so did I.

The bus took forever, a literal reminder every minute of the significance of the moment every stop along the way to us. Every mom was saying goodbye to her baby. Every baby was thinking about things, wondering what color carpet square she’d get or if she’d make a friend that day.

I think some babies maybe thought about things a little more than others.

Until flashing lights were in sight.

And loud brakes were heard.

And big doors opened to what seemed like even bigger steps.

And it was time to go.

Just like that. She grabbed the railing and climbed the stairs.

My baby.

My little girl.

No longer an image in my imagination but my daughter.

She looked back. And, I couldn’t look away.

And then, my heart rode away on a big yellow school bus.

I’m so glad we did it.

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