Category: Kids

Solo Mama: My Daughter Doesn’t Like Her Brown Skin

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This is not an easy read, nor was it easy to write. I debated about posting it because it’s really not my story to tell. The only way I can share it with peace of mind is to purely tell it from a mother’s point of view, what I observe and experience. It seems like the right time to share it.

My daughter has disliked her brown skin and her black hair since about the time she could start talking. The light-skinned blond haired girls in her class got more attention. When she came home from daycare and told me she wanted “lello hair” and “white skin.” I would observe her following her white girls around in class and wanting to be friends with them, dismissing little girls with brown skin. My beautiful tiny little daughter.

My daughter is half Vietnamese, but no one places her as that. She doesn’t want to know anything about Vietnamese culture, I’ve tried. The closest she gets to Vietnamese culture is loving pho.

She asked me one time why I had to pick a dad for her that has brown skin.

Before my daughter was born, an Indian woman I worked shared a card with me that her young daughter had given her a card on Mother’s Day. Inside, her little daughter had written “Why do you have to be brown? I don’t want to be brown” in her childlike awkward handwriting. Imagine getting that message in your Mother’s Day card. I couldn’t at the time.

It was hard going places with my daughter when she was younger. She would pull close to me when we were around brown and black people and she would whisper “I don’t like their color.” Anger would bubble up inside of me. How could someone I was raising not like brown people? How could she not like her brown skin? Where did she learn that? They say racism is learned. Who taught her to not like her own brown skin?

She doesn’t seem to be so focused these days on her skin color but she still says she is ugly and she hates it when I tell her she’s beautiful. I realize lots of girls might say this no matter how much you tell them different but I can’t shake the fact that this all started with her skin color. I show her pictures of friends with brown skin and say “isn’t she beautiful? Look at how beautiful her black hair is!” and she agrees now when I ask her and it seems genuine.

My daughter never talked about how she wishes her eyes were different, or her smile, or her body. She always wished for different skin. Some children with brown skin wish their skin was white and think they are not beautiful or handsome because of their color.

Reflecting on this story and sharing it is hard because it is deeply personal. I know I’m not the only mother who has a child with brown skin who can tell this story. It’s important to make our stories more widely known, and to repeat them until we find it in ourselves to create and live by a new narrative.

Throwback Thursday: Swimming: “F*cking Sh*t” Momma

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Here is another oldie but goodie to kick off the summer of 2020 – although we might not see in the inside of a public pool for awhile yet…

I came up out of the water and wiped my eyes off so I could scan the pool. Treading water in the deep end of the rec center pool, I tried to locate my daughter as the waves grew larger. Kids on inner tubes bounced above increasingly larger mountains of water created by the pool’s wave system. It took me a minute to locate her in the shallow end of the pool, bobbing crazily in a red life jacket, her head poking out above a clear, over-inflated inner tube. Our eyes met.

“Fucking shit,” her sweet little mouth formed the words as she glared at me.

Not the last time I would hear those words over the course of the two hours we were at the pool. They have become my daughter’s new favorite way to irk me when I’m not doing what she wants me to do. I’ve discovered that the only ways to reduce her use of these new words is to surprise her with random outbursts of the words in conversation and ignore her when she uses the words. Slowly, their attractiveness as one more way of naughty-making is becoming less appealing.

“Hey Momma! If you don’t come over here and carry me, I’m going to say F-u-c-k,” she announced from the pool stairs.

I swam small laps, as some strange little 6-year old sat on the pool stairs repeating “fuck” over and over. Whose child was that? What a weirdo.

Eventually, the cursing died down and I swam over to her. She hopped on my back and we floated around together. “Momma, I love you more than anything in the world,” she whispered in my ear.

Sigh…

Zoom, Google Meet and WebEx – How Do We Survive Online Meetings for 8 Hours Straight?

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One factoid about COVID-19 and the workplace that stuns me: apparently, when you HAVE to work at home, scheduled meetings increase by 150% (neck and neck with the increase in alcohol sales). My first two weeks at home, I had consistent meetings, often scheduled with no time in between, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. I had to start scheduling “I’m making my kids lunch” for 15 minutes on top of existing meetings. Thankfully I’ve seen a slight slowdown with meeting scheduling, probably due to the fact that the government realized that the state was still running even while non-essential employees worked at home and ensuring that our days were full with meetings was a bit overkill. Just my conspiracy theory thinking…

THE single most challenging aspect of working at home with tons of meetings is having young children. Half the time I’m on mute, but with video, and I’m sure my co-workers and client sites are wondering “who the hell is she yelling at and what is going on?” There are occasional meeting bombings that occur. Our house is small. Why do my kids insist on standing right next to me and watching my online meetings like they are an exciting YouTube video? Everyone on my calls thinks it’s cute when some random child pops out of the floor into the camera’s view, but I’m on the verge of losing my shit. Some meeting participants flash their cameras over to where their cute cat or dog is lounging on a chair or a couch. When I flash my camera over to my couch, what you will see is a man-child in flood-ready pajama pants (he gets a new pair every 2 years), chewing on his fingers while he screams things like “Noob” and “son of a b*&%$#” and “I have a backpack with a fish in it so MAN UP!” while staring at a device.

Along with children at home, I am really struggling with the technology. We’ve recently moved over to Google everything. No more Microsoft Office. I thought I’d retire before I saw Word disappear from my life. Moving to the Google Suite is an event that has never made me feel older. Sagging body parts, creaky joints, and sketchy memory have got NOTHING on Google Suite. Learning this platform has aged me about 15 years. Luckily, when I’m facilitating meetings or trainings online, I’m usually paired up with someone at least 3 years younger than me, which is like dog years where the technology learning curve is concerned.

Oops! You will have to excuse me – it’s almost 8 p.m. and I have some work to do that didn’t fit between meetings today…

 

 

 

 

 

Reflection: My Breath in the Deep Water

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Do you have theme songs for the people in your life?

My theme song for my daughter is Deep Water, by American Authors. The YouTube video can be found here.

When I think about my darkest moments over the past several years – mental health, work, parenting, relationships, questioning self worth – my daughter is my breath in the deep, deep water. When life pulls me under, her presence brings me to the surface with strong, sure strokes. Not in a creepy, dependent, or misplaced reverence kind of way. She is moody, unpredictable, and frustrating but inside that tiny little ball of hot mess is a solid and grounded force that has helped guide me through rough waters since the day I met her.

 

 

 

 

Solo Mama: (Not) Surviving Work at Home with Kids

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Hey Mamas! Are you at your wit’s end? Read on.

There are several reasons why I’ve dropped blogging for months, but I’m not ready to share those stories. What I am ready to do is try to make light of my current situation because honestly, I’m not really surviving work at home with kids. We just finished the Lord of the Rings trilogy for the first time and I don’t quite relate with the tenacity, willpower and courage of Frodo, hence making me Gollum. I’m raggedy, unpredictable, and even worse, I host more than two separate voices battling for power in my head. I’m tussling with Frodo on the precipice at the end of the movie, just before being knocked into the fiery pit below with the ring, which represents the last grains of my sanity…

What would I say to you, mama, also trying to survive? Let me tell you. At the start of this “Safer At Home, Stay At Home, Now Come Out but You are Still Safer at Home,” I kind of liked it. Maybe I’ve held out longer than others…but I’m feeling myself start to crack. Here are 3 of my go-tos to try and stay grounded:

  1. Avoid social media as much as possible. Surprise! Everyone is still posting their highlight reels! Our lives are falling apart to some extent but nevermind! I lost 20 pounds, my son was just accepted into Harvard at 10 years old and we are moving to LA because my daughter was discovered by a Hollywood agent who just happened to be buying cereal at Walmart while in town filming Back to the Future 4 when she lurked past him wearing a mask and matted hair that she had not combed out for 3 weeks.
  2. Create an “approximate” schedule. (That you will revise every day, but at least you have the satisfaction of telling everyone that your kids are on a schedule of learning AND fun!) Here is our schedule if you need some ideas. It is not copyrighted, so feel free to steal it and paste it up on the fridge:
    • Wake up and do chores that mama creates on the spot just because she thinks you should build character and not just sloth around the house all day like the teenagers you have not yet become.
    • Complete one homework assignment
    • Complete one language lesson on Duolingo so mama can post on Facebook that you are developing fluency in Navajo
    • Find new ways to pick on each other and make each other cry with intermittent spells of good fun
    • Go outside and ride around in the vacant lot across the street while mama accompanies you during her 20th Zoom meeting that day
    • Eat lunch (a cookie)
    • Get on your devices (here is where we take a wrong turn every day…)
  3. And finally, drink water! (Just kidding. That’s a tip in about every list of tips you can find online).
  4. Really, just try your best not to lose your shit and if you do sometimes, don’t feel bad. I would say that I’ve tried baths, meditation, learning languages, reading devotionals, long drives to nowhere, exercising, therapy, regularly taking my meds, and it is just plain hard out there right now.

Until next time, I’m thinking of all of you who can relate, and trying to push good vibes out into the universe…

Solo Mama: Parenting Your (x) Grader

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This past week I picked up a couple of parenting books at church. Specifically, Parenting Your Second Grader and Parenting Your Fourth Grader. I figure I need all the help I can get. As I checked out with the cashier, she smiled and said, “Let us know what you think. We are really interested in feedback about these books.”

(Sure. I will get you some feedback if I survive the journey. As I write this, my second grader is choreographing a dance to Dance Monkey next to me at the table. Obviously I haven’t gotten around to reading about how to parent her.)

As soon as we got into the car, my fourth grader commandeered the fourth grader book and asked if he could read it. He hates to read so I was pleasantly surprised. I figured “Why not?” He might as well get a heads-up on all the voodoo I’m about to be work on him.

The first thing that happened was that he got a huge smile on his face and said, “Momma, look what’s on page 80!!” His sister demanded to know too. I knew too well from already having skimmed the book. “Yeah but look what’s on page 86!” I replied.

Page 80 started a chapter on sex, and page 86 was the beginning of the chapter on technology. My daughter immediately demanded to see the second grader book to see if sex was covered in her book. It was. Both of the kids were now super excited that these parenting books were finally going to force me into conversations about sex. Since last weekend, I’ve been asking friends with older children how they broached the subject with their kids early on. I always thought I’d be the cool parent and be able to talk about all this easily. Not the case. I just don’t think I should be telling an 8- and 9-year old about sex? The books don’t actually tell me to say, they just offer “stems” like, “I’m so glad you asked about that” or “Can we talk about this at another time?” (I will be using that one a lot), or “What kinds of things have you heard about sex?” (Do I need to cite the source for these questions? Are they trademarked due to the fact that they are in these books?).

I was especially interested in any guidance about technology. A suggestion for my fourth grader on this topic was sitting down with him while he played games or watched YouTube videos on the iPad. Last night, I cozied up next to him and the iPad on the couch and he freaked out. “Momma! What are you doing????”

By now, I’ve read both books cover to cover. My son has also read the fourth grader book cover to cover. At the very least, the books will make me think about my parenting. They also offer sections for reflection. Like “What do you hope to be true for your child in 468 weeks regarding (x)?” (The amount of time until my son turns 18). The most helpful part is that they offer phrases and sentiments that your child needs to hear at their respective age based on their social and emotional development.

If anyone reading this knows of any accessible (I am able to read them while stuck in traffic) and fabulous parenting books, please reply or shoot me a message. I’m not sure how much I will be able to digest along with my “on the job” parenting training, but these books have peaked my interest. Now, back to Dance Monkey.

 

Solo Mama: Never Do This

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If you’ve read any of my posts over the past couple of years, you have probably read some of my daughter’s “Never Do This” statements. At times, she gets on a roll and will bother me every few minutes while watching a video, playing with her toys, listening to music, or just riding along in the car.

Below is a collection of a few of my favorites. Just for a laugh. It is important to note that due to the tedium of reading my job “title” over and over, I omitted the “Momma” from the start of each warning. Make no mistake, each warning is prefaced by at least one “Momma.”

Health and Safety (General Well-Being) Warnings:

“Never open your mouth while you are in the water. You might swallow a crab.”

“Never look up when someones says ‘there’s an airplane.’ They might rob you.”

“Never hide in a fireplace.”

“If you are suspicious, just walk away!”

“Never let anyone look in your purse unless it is a trusted person.”

“Never hold out a shiny coin. It will attract stuff that will eat you.”

Warnings Related to Bunnies:

“Don’t ever build your tent by a pile of rocks because a bunny could throw rocks on your tent.”

“Don’t ever put a string on a tree and hang from it because a bunny could come and cut the string and you will fall down.”

General Advice:

“Never get embarassed when you are on a stage.”

“Never put a heavy pumpkin on a boat.”

Momma’s Warnings That Are Often Overlooked by Children:

“Never show your momma videos from the backseat of the car while she is driving 75 miles per hour on the highway.”

“Never point your arrow or your airsoft gun at your sister.”

“Never spell out profanity on your trash can or refrigerator with magnet letters. Especially before family visits.”

“Never give up the possibility that you can aim straight into the toilet bowl when you pee.”

 

Solo Mama: Single Parent Overload

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Whhhoooooaaaaa!

I hit Monday night, at the end of a long weekend (Dr. King, I celebrate you AND I also celebrate sanity AND there are too many Monday holidays over the next few months), and I realized I was on the verge of losing my mind. I was anxious, irritated, and had a very short fuse. Does this sound familiar to any parents with an extra day tagged onto the weekend? I’m blocking any Facebook parents who post cute, smiley, huggy-family pics from their long holiday weekend snowmobiling, ice fishing, taking a cooking class, posing with Mickey at Disney World, adopting a cat, getting matching tattoos, attending a major sporting event, soaking in hot springs or skiing at ??? (I don’t even know where it’s cool to ski anymore). Insert LOL emoji here. Especially this past weekend.

I’m an introvert, and every introvert knows that you need time alone to recharge. Time alone over the past 10 years=non-existent. In addition to being an introvert, I hold myself to standards that are simply not achievable. Our little family was non-stop from Friday night until Monday night with activities, friends, family, typical weekend chores – groceries, laundry, house cleaning – and by the time I realized I was tapped out on the final evening of the long weekend, it was too late.

Back to the time alone piece. Every parent knows that once you have children, you are never alone. They follow you everywhere, like tiny little poltergeists, they appear from out of nowhere and they are usually bleating “Momma. Momma. Momma” and then they disappear as mysteriously as they appeared.  As they’ve gotten older, “Momma” is just the stem to a monologue about a random piece of trivia that they’ve encountered on YouTube. The other day, I opened up the browser on my phone, and the first page was titled “How do I be a girl in Roblox?” Really. Everything about them is shocking. And it never fails, the moment you’ve hit your word quota for the day, one of them launches into a speech about Tones and I and how they imagined she would look based on her voice in the song “Dance Monkey” or they ask you about sex.

It is also a one-way street with these people. The other day, my daughter and I were painting clay animal figurines, and I brought up what I thought was an important topic. I wanted to know how she felt about it. After she answered my first question, she said, “Momma, can we not talk anymore? I’m trying to concentrate.” I will need to remember that line the next time they want to discuss the body styling of Mustangs versus Camaros in the car or ask me what world events I might be hiding from them (my son accused me of purposely withholding current news from them about Iran last week).

I hit a wall Monday night. I need to notice the warning signs before everything caves in. I need to be better about going into my room, closing the bedroom door, and hanging up my “Keep out” sign and escaping even just for 30 minutes. It might just make us all appreciate each other more as well. For others who hit this wall on a regular basis, I see you.

 

Solo Mama and the Resolutions Carried Over From 2019

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New Year’s resolutions seem to be a dying fad. This year so far, a few people have mentioned them, but mostly in the context of avid exercisers complaining about their gyms filling up for a couple of months. In place of resolutions, the thing I’ve heard most is “I’m so glad 2019 is over, 2020 has to be a better year.” This seems to be the up and coming outlook; I’m hearing it more and more over the past couple of years.

I always face each year with “meh” – last year wasn’t the worst, I can’t imagine this year will be better or worse. I don’t place any hope in a great new year, simply because as years go, they all have their really high and really low points and everything in between. Most of what I would call “resolutions,” I started resolving to do the last few months of 2019.

I started using my Bible app more – thank you to a network of app users who have each imparted some insight about how to use it. Clearly I’m not upping my technology game in the new year. I think the most useful part of the app is that it pushes out notifications when my friends on the app are doing something. My technology savvy did not allow me to figure out how to shut these down, or maybe God intervened because He wanted to talk to me. I’m about to take my second drink when “Samantha just started a new reading plan!” I’m ready to cuss someone out over text when “Keisha just created a verse image!” I’m drowning in self-pity about being solo mama and up pops “Fred completed his Bible Plan! Say Congrats!” Thanks, God. Yeah. I hear you.

I lost my 15 pounds well before the new year, and changed my eating habits to keep them off (5 months strong!). Over this next year, I’m hoping to introduce what the experts call “exercise” into this program. I learned late last year that we have free access to one of our division’s gyms and it’s pretty decent. All I need to do is drive 10 minutes west, change my clothes and hop on a machine. Those things are proving to be giant barriers for me. I’m not sure if it’s the drive or the effort it takes to change my clothes. Maybe I just can’t stand that it’s free and I’d rather pay $30/month for something I will never use.

I started doing more stuff with my kids intentionally over the past few months. Like, not just letting stuff happen around us (“Look how that iPad just jumped into your hands!”), but actually going out and trying new experiences. We tried cross country skiing a couple of weeks ago as part of a weekend getaway we took together. This weekend, I went to a range and shot arrows with my son and his friend. I’ve developed new friendships with my kids’ friends’ moms which has allowed me to spend time socializing with other adults. We have some things coming up over spring break which are sure to rock the kids’ worlds so we’ve been planning for that.

Finally, about a month ago, I began the never-ending, backbreaking task of starting to clean out my house. A little at a time. I constantly tell the kids that we need to downsize and move to a townhome so that I don’t have to kill myself every summer trying to keep up with the yard. They get sad and say they want a house with a yard. I ask them to help me, they don’t (my daughter will do it for money), and the vicious cycle starts all over. It is probably all just idle threats though unless I plan to move to Missouri, since I could never afford another home in Colorado. That said, I’ve really gotten into keeping track of money with a budgeting app. Thank God for apps. What did we do before we had apps?

So, keeping my expectations realistic, I’m expecting 2020 to be a decent year. On the path to continuous improvement as myself, mom, employee, friend, sibling and daughter. Happy decent new year to you!

Watching Them Grow (and loving it)

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A friend recently asked me what my favorite part of parenting is (don’t end a sentence in a preposition). I told her that it was watching the kids grow up into their own unique little personalities. When they were small, it felt like they were tiny extensions of me. Now they feel separate and different, with only hints of traits that have been passed down from my side of the family.

I am in a constant state between wanting to banish them to their rooms forever and laughing until I cry because of something they just said or did. Noah getting into my “Hot Guys and Baby Animals” book and reading it and summarizing it for me (“Momma, it’s basically about guys and their pets. But one guy was totally naked in a park. You couldn’t see his privates though.”). Neelah yelling at me at the park “Look momma, Noah can pole dance!” as my son jumps onto a pole and swings down it with his legs in the splits (I have watched the video of this several times and never stop laughing). Both of them binge watching My Little Pony and Beyblade together on Netflix. Volunteering with Noah’s improv class at school and watching these amazing little people catch on to clever comedy and perform some decent sketches. Neelah asking me last week what the word “sexy” means and I told her it meant “cute.” For the past week, she has been telling everyone they are sexy and describing other kids as such. I finally decided that I had to come clean. I told her that “sexy” means you want to have sex with someone. She still doesn’t know what that means but she has stopped calling me and other kids sexy. Whew.

All of it blows my mind. I am constantly in a state of “Wow! I can’t believe they are so cool and they live with me!” For the longest time I had them convinced that they had come out of my butt and we had always marveled about how people so wonderful could come out of my butt. Again, I had to come clean with that too.

It’s strange to sit and process where their personalities come from. Differing from most families, I have no idea what personality traits have been passed down to Noah from his father’s side and from Neelah’s side, my knowledge is limited. Noah has amazing patience and the ability to quickly and successfully regulate his emotions when he is upset or angry or sad. That didn’t come from me. Neelah has an amazing sense of style, sweats a lot, and is grumpy about 90% of the time and those traits did not come from me. I always wonder what it would have been like to know their fathers and be able to say “oh yeah, that’s from your side of the family” or “he/she is definitely your child.”

In any case, I am pretty sure that anyone with kids reading this knows to some extent what I’m talking about. If you haven’t thought about it, stop and do so. It really helps you appreciate them as a wonderful gift. I promise. 🙂