CherylKatz.org

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19212514&sc=emaf

This is a story I heard on NPR the other day, link via NoirBettie at Through the Looking Glass.

I’m a bit of a Nervous Nellie as a mom, fraught with worry as I enter a new phase, and definitely uptight when I think forward to what might be coming. I tend to give a lot of thought to the matter of whether I’m giving Sami enough stimulation when I’m home with her. While I think about structuring her time, I really very rarely do - she’s free to roam the living room at will and the house as long as I’m around to monitor her exploits, and even if she’s playing with the dustpan on the floor as she did the other day, babbling to herself with her newfound sounds, I rarely interfere and frankly graciously accept the short spurt of Net Surfing Time I’ve been allotted.

So this story gave me substantial food for thought. I clearly worry too much. It’s not a stretch to say that Sami is an imaginitive kid. She is still pre-verbal, but I gave her some lettuce with her lunch today to see what she’d do with it. She ate the first leaf, and put the second on her head, laughing maniacally. I’m not sure what was going through her head, but I do find it heartening that she thought it was hysterical.

I’ve read about unschooling before and find the idea of child-directed learning appealing. As an adult, I enjoy most the activities I fall into through exploration; I started spinning and taught myself with a few minutes of guidance from an expert basically by trial and error, through doing research about knitting and yarns. Such a powerful method for an adult must leave a child, unencumbered by a lifetime of structure, with limitless learning potential, driven by their own pursuits!

I also know that I cannot be the one to stay home and educate my child - while I loved the year I spent at home with her beyond measure on a very deep level, the isolation and self-criticism and the depression they led to nearly destroyed me, and I imagine that even a traditional, structured school would be better for Sami in the long run than prolonged exposure to a self-destructive mother.  I really admire the people of whom I know who have made the committment, and can handle the experience, of being completely responsible for the education of their children.  That is an incredible undertaking, and an impressive accomplishment-in-progress.

Can Sami have both? Can she attend traditional-style schools in the day time but be encouraged to follow her interests at home? I imagine that if she has the right teachers and if Ben and I get our acts together, the two philosophies could be dovetailed nicely. I think that out-of-the-box, for lack of a more succinct term, thinking can be useful in all types of problem solving, even ones encountered within a structured framework. It may be self-consolation, but I can’t abide the idea that one precludes the other.

All of this said, I will now officially stop worrying if Sami’s play time is “educational” enough. I already minimize her exposure to television, and make sure that exposure includes active engagement with the characters, music and me. I like the idea of activities rather than toys, but I think that Sami already does, too (hence, the recent interest in sweeping with a hand brush and dustpan, wiping the floor with a towel, taking simple toys apart and putting them back together.) So this is the part where I’m supposed to Stop Worrying And Learn To Love The Play. I think I can do that.

I am going to do a little more directed research into education methods, for my own fortification.

When I outlined this post in my head, it was intended to be a positive follow through on last night’s post. However, my one year old is recovering from shots and grappling with her second (and apparently final) round of teething. She goes down to bed easy as pie, but her sleep is choppy at best, and so is mine.

So above all, I have to say that the key to overcoming the general overwhelm of early motherhood and the mild to moderate baby blues is to get your kid to sleep as much as possible, as early as possible. It was so easy for me to become trapped in my own confusion when I wasn’t sleeping enough to really recharge at night.

I can say this with clarity because for about three weeks, Samantha was sleeping for 6-8 hour chunks in her crib, in her own room. The time before the season of sleeping is nearly a year-long blur, and now that I am in a period of upset sleep, I can identify just how valuable it was.

Beyond just a laundry list of the last several months and all the problems that cropped up, there is a point. Becoming a mother is a difficult transition, harder for some than others. It’s okay to admit when it’s hard and ask for help, whether that’s extra hands to get the dishes done, a sympathetic ear over coffee, or a regular monthly therapy session.

I think it can be really difficult to identify what the problem is and how to solve it. It took me nearly a whole year, because the very idea that something was wrong clashed so loudly with the mental picture I had painted of How It Was.