Technorati Tags: Father's Day

Work is one thing…other parts of life are also disproportionately (unfairly?) limited by single parenthood. Here are some of the things I feel that I can’t do as a single mom:

1. Make last-minute plans. Friends my age don’t quite understand this one, but they will one day.
2. Take a purse everywhere. Two is not enough hands if I’m going to buy something: one hand is for the child, the other is for whatever I purchase. And in my case, I need all the strength I have in both arms to lift my son into a grocery cart.
3. Jump out of the car for a minute. When there isn’t a second person to wait in the car, everything is more annoying. I find this most frustrating for things like getting cash from the ATM or paying for gas inside the gas station. An average trip means 3 or 4 times of hooking and unhooking the car seat.
4. Financially justify pampering. If I want to get a pedicure or get my hair cut, I have to add the cost of a babysitter to the cost of the pampering. Needless to say, my conclusion is always the same: not worth it. Thus, my non-hairstyle. I’m just trying to avoid a mom haircut for as long as possible.
5. Take a quick trip to the store. I have this luxury on the days when my mom is not working, but most days require extensive planning for the the most insignificant of errands.
6. Comfortably go anywhere at night with child in tow. Mother + baby + dark parking lot = bad idea.
7. Skip a bath time/bed time routine. Even when I do have help around, my son wants me to do be the one sitting in the bathroom until his skin gets raisin-like and reading the same books or watching four hundred episodes of Pocoyo.
8. Yell and run away when there’s a bug in the house. I wish I had someone else to do the shoe-wielding for me, but the two-year-old has yet to perfect his aim.
9. Make dinner every night. Thankfully, I don’t really care about this one.
10. Ignore a cry for help because someone else might respond. I am the only boo-boo doctor and no matter what I am doing, I literally have to drop it and run when I hear that telltale scream.

Now that my son is spending time with his father fairly often, I get quite a few days sans limitations. I’m looking forward to living Life, Balanced.

Technorati Tags: divorce, parenting, Pocoyo, single mom, two-year-old, work-life balance, working mom

Technorati Tags: bilingualism, second language, SpanglishBaby

As the only grandson in his father’s family and the only grandchild in mine, my boy was practically royalty from the moment of his birth. Sometimes I look at all the toy vehicles lined up in the garage, the clothes spilling out of his dresser, and the trains I trip on in the middle of the night, and leap to the conclusion that there is no avoiding Only Child Syndrome. I fear that he will have a life that is too easy, but also want to provide him with that. Many parents go through this and have to learn to set boundaries from the get-go, but is it really worse with only children?

The truth is: we probably never know the answer. Each parent has either one child or more than one child, so it’s hard to see the other side and imagine if life would be simpler or more difficult, better or worse. Our birth order and the number of siblings we have is just one factor that shapes our lives. While parents’ decisions about family size can define a childhood, they don’t have to mold an adulthood.

Perhaps I am preoccupied with the only-child circumstance for stereotypical reasons: because I fear that my child will be “spoiled” or selfish no matter what I teach him. Or it could be because I never wanted to have only one child. Whatever the reason, I go back and forth between loving the idea of having him as my baby forever, my little buddy, and yearning to give him a friend for life and meet whatever other little people I have yet to produce. Separating the latter urge from mere baby fever, which tends to arise when you battle a toddler 24/7, is the hard part.

In my single-mom situation, the reality of having more children lies rather far in the future. As with any major life event, it will happen if it happens and all will be fine whether my hijo remains my only one or not.

What’s your experience? Is the spoiled only child a myth or a reality?

Technorati Tags: birth order, family, only children, parenting, siblings, single mom, toddlers

Nearly every person I know who graduated from college in the last 5 years has moved back home at some point. Sometimes, this is for personal reasons, but it’s most often for financial reasons.

After all, living with the ‘rents looks much better on paper than any apartment we could afford.

Mom’s & Dad’s: stocked pantry; laundry on-site; full cable package; one or more bedrooms furnished with comfort items from childhood; free parking; built-in babysitter, counselor, friend, etc…

If it weren’t for the sinking feeling — the lurking F for Failure — that accompanies this common living situation, we’d all be at our happiest in this mid-20s period of material fruitlessness. In a culture that propels us forward with nebulous promises and expectations, though, a move back home often requires a lengthy explanation. As degree-bearing, family-starting young people, we no longer have to endure the barrage of questions about what we will do with our lives at some indefinite point in the future; now, the questions focus on today, tomorrow, and next week.

Have you gotten a call about that job you applied for?

Did you get into grad school?

How much work do you have this week?

It can be even more uncomfortable answering these questions than dealing with an onslaught of unwanted advice.

Instead of feeling like we have to explain away our difficulties, we should consider that there is incredible freedom in having no plans. For once in our lives, we can forget about preparing for some day that will never come and just live. We don’t have to be moving forward (which way is forward?). Sometimes the best way to see clearly is to stand in one place for awhile, to observe rather than act. If that place is our parents’ house, we should consider ourselves lucky.

Financial lack is a powerful cultural force. All the lies inherent in our varying-degrees-of-privileged childhoods can now be unearthed as we reevaluate what we want in terms of identity and values. Things that have nothing to do with money are the hardest to create and maintain.

Will we live up to the expectations of economists and sociologists who label us the Recession Generation? Or will there be more to it than just safer fiscal behavior?

Living with Mom and Dad again gives us an opportunity to metamorphose the definition of the American family. Perhaps we won’t see it as necessary to push our own kids out of the house at some arbitrary age (18? after college?) and we will find a way to support them with more than just large bedrooms and free meals. After all, our parents’ eagerness to send us out into the “real world” was always driven by their wish to retire and reap the rewards of 30+ years of work. If we won’t have those same rewards — i.e. a robust 401(k) promising years of travel and relaxation — how will we view our relationship with our adult children? How can we use this time at home to shift our mindset, desires, and expectations?

I, for one, am hopeful that there will be a more permanent shift towards inclusion of the extended family in raising children, as exists in many non-Western cultures. Living with my mother sometimes presents challenges for me, but has been nothing short of a godsend for my son. He gets the structure of the parent-child relationship and the fun and trust of the grandparent-child relationship in one place.

Who’s to say that we need to check off young adult milestones in the traditional order if that’s going to make life more difficult for everyone? As long as there is mutual respect and we don’t take advantage of our parents, a cooperative household of more than two generations can be beneficial for everyone. The difficult part is learning to share life’s burdens. Sometimes, we simply can’t do it alone.

Technorati Tags: 20something, American culture, economy, grandparents, moving back home, parenting, recession generation

It’s never too late to be what you might have been. ~ George Eliot

On a good day, I think I have the best job in the world. It comes with flexible hours: I work a few hours a day, sometimes online. It’s rewarding: I guide students through tough tests, tough courses, and sometimes, tough personal struggles. Fortunately, the going rate for private tutoring is such that it has sustained me for many years.

On a bad day, I feel hopeless. If I am not getting through to this one child, how could I possibly get through to the many more who need my help? The very thing that is absolutely necessary for the continuation of my career — the per-student cost — is the most depressing part; it denies access to large numbers of floundering students.

Most days, of course, fall somewhere in between. I feel tugged away from tutoring by the need for stability (no more dead summers), yet my ultimate career interests center around the skills I have perfected in my decade of one-on-one academics. Since job satisfaction fluctuates like this for most people, it helps to maintain a vision of something better, if not bigger. As with other life goals, putting this in writing (or at least allowing the thoughts to be directed into dreams) takes it from impossible to improbable.

Here’s my career vision:

My ideal job would combine tutoring and mentoring in a large-scale nonprofit. I would train others in my “methods” (once I render them into something concrete and transferable) and have each student sponsored by an adult willing to pay for his/her supplemental education. It’s the same idea as sponsoring a single hungry child on the other side of the world, and would eliminate the need for excessive fundraising from stingy corporate sources.

Whether or not this particular vision materializes, its articulation reminds me that a job is a job is a job…until we turn it into something more. A little daydreaming, a little reconnecting to the reasons we work, may be a good start. Even those jobs that just get us through a summer, a crisis, or a decade can act as stepping stones.

With all the bad news and dim forecasts swirling around, right now is the best time to examine the difference between a job and a career, work and life’s work.

Do you know what your life’s work would have/should have been?

It still is.

Technorati Tags: career, education, employment, goals, job, tutoring, vision, work

Read it and let me know what you think!

Technorati Tags: bilingual, SpanglishBaby, Spanish

I speak only Spanish to him, with few exceptions (i.e. when I’m frustrated and can’t find exactly the right words). He watches equal amounts of Spanish and English television — his favorite is Pocoyo — and I only read to him in Spanish. (This becomes funny when translation is involved.) Most days, it’s just the two of us interacting en espanol.

In the past few weeks, he’s become quite opinionated about my use of English. He doesn’t flinch when I use English with other people in front of him, but he completely ignores me if I speak directly to him in English. Today, I took him to Starbucks. Because I was speaking to the barista in English and my brain was in that mode, I asked if he wanted a cookie in English. He didn’t even look at me. But when I said “quieres una galleta?” he nodded and said “mmhmm.”

Things are the opposite with my mom. He spends a lot of time with her when I’m working and on her days off. She uses only English with him, but she’s starting to learn some Spanish words. He laughs when she speaks Spanish and sometimes even shushes her.

This awareness of separate languages is an exciting development because he’s simultaneously advancing towards the stage of nonstop talking. He said his first complete sentence (5 words) a few days ago, but it was English and Spanish mixed together. I was so excited to hear him mix the languages (code switch) because it means that he has a command of both grammatical structures. I feel like a scientist conducting an experiment, and being blown away by the results. Every myth that we grow up with about our limited brain capacity explodes at the moment that a 2-year-old says a coherent sentence in two languages, with native accents in both.

I suppose that for someone who grew up in a bilingual household, this wouldn’t be such a crazy discovery. For me, though, it’s an amazing thing to witness. I know plenty of people who grew up speaking Spanish at home and English at school, so I know it works. Still, there’s no lesson like seeing it happen in your own child. We think that the “firsts” stop after the first step, the first word, but I’m learning that there are many, many more to come.

I wish that every child in the world could have the gift of bilingualism, but all I can do is encourage other parents to do what they can to expose their kids to a second (or third or fourth) language. There is room in those little heads for all of it.

Technorati Tags: bilingualism, code switching, espanol, parenting, Pocoyo, spanglish, SpanglishBaby, Spanish

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