What to do when a family member says "No!" to a holiday!

Leanne's husband didn't want to do Christmas when they got married.  She had wonderful memories of her childhood Christmas seasons.  She told her husband she was willing to throw out the old rules about what Christmas was supposed to involve.  She asked him what he wanted the season to mean.  They ended up experimenting and finding their own traditions.  Now Christmas means even more to her family!

If you'd like to hear the broadcast of the internet radio show with Leanne, go to www.wayofthetoddler.com and click on the Podcast Archives at the bottom of the page.  The other place is http://toginet.com/podcasts/thewayofthetoddlerhour/?s=thewayofthetoddlerhour

Here are some websites and books that she used to research possibilities for their own kind of special Christmas time:

http://www.kaboose.com

http://www.amazingmoms.com

http://dltk-kids.com

http://moonchildren.com/holidays/wintersolstice/index.html

http:familyfun.go.com

http://www.circlesanctuary.org/index.html

http:www.janbrett.com

http://www.holidayinsights.com/moreholidays/index.htm

Book List

Here are some of our favorite books

Born With a Bang: Jennifer Morgan
From Lave to Life: Jennifer Morgan
Mammals Who Morph: Jennifer Morgan
A Solstice Tree for Jenny: Karen I. Shragg
The Shortest Day: Wendy Pfeffer
Who’s That Knocking on Christmas Eve? Jan Brett
The Mitten: Jan Brett
Santa Mouse and Santa Mouse Where are You? : Michael Brown
The Jolly Christmas Postman: Janet & Allan Ahlberg
The Polar Express: Chris Van Allsburg
Circle Round: Raising Children in Goddess Traditions
Earth Child: Kathryn Sheehand and Mary Waidner
Celebrating the Great Mother: Cait Johnson and Maura Shaw

To Respond or Not to Respond: When the other Primary Parent has a Personality Disorder

Today our family (my husband, step-kids and me) went to see the counselor.  We go at least once a month.  The kids' mother is also welcome to take them to the same counselor.

Each time, the counselor checks in with all of us as a group.  We talk about how things are going, discuss thinking errors, and brag.  Then, the counselor problem-solves with my husband and me to figure out how to best handle the latest email from the kids' mother (my husband's first wife).  Finally, the counselor checks in with the kids without my husband or me in the room, in case they need to talk to him about anything that they are nervous about saying in front of us.  Even when the kids are doing fine, we need to keep tabs on the entire situation, since the kids go back and forth between our homes, week on/week off.  Our main concern is keeping the kids protected from the tangly mess between adults and giving them tools to employ as they grow and increasingly encounter VERY DIFFERENT viewpoints between their primary caretakers.

This time, without the kids present, we discussed our policy of handling emails.  First of all, the judge said all communication should be in written form - whew!  Next, we've studied how to best handle communication with someone who has her personality disorder.  We are supposed to be boring.  Additional information can provide fuel to the fire, so keeping contact minimal and generic is recommended.  We came to the conclusion that someday, this policy may backfire, and we may have to handle things in a bigger way.  However, until that bridge needs crossed, the overall pattern needs to be looked at and taken into consideration.  The emails have progressively slowed, shortened, and softened (a relative term).  As long as we are covering the proper bases with the appropriate community members, we'll choose to not respond to her pressure.

One day at a time!

Contest: The Truly Amazing Person You Are

Each Tuesday (2pm PST), my sister and I host an internet radio show called "The Way of the Toddler Hour" on www.toginet.com.

We want to hear about how you or someone you know are truly amazing!  If we read your entry on the show, you could win one of the following:
* a copy of The Way of the Toddler by Leta Hamilton
* a dream interpretation
* get your Corpus Callosum (brain superhighway) opened up to 100% using BIT/s
* have an allergy "balanced"
* relieve the stress of an emotionally tough situation

Write to us today!  My email is ascendingenergy@gmail.com.

Instead of During the Holidays

As a birth mother, I gave up holidays with my daughter permanently, so she could enjoy the traditions of her adoptive family.  Since it is a semi-open adoption, it means that I get to see her every once in awhile at a different time of year.  She is 22 now, and we just had a week with her at the beginning of November, without the stress of a big holiday meal.  We didn't have to make sure any presents were wrapped.  We just spent quality time together.  It was the best gift in the whole world!

Remember there are 5 ways to share love.  They are referred to as Love Languages:  gifts, quality time, words of affirmation, acts of service, and physical touch.

These help reduce the stress of holiday gift giving!  Just because we are adults, it doesn't mean we can't make our own coupons for loved ones!  Plus, you can specify a time that works for you.  This reduces the time and money pressure of the holiday season, and it spreads things out.  For example, you could offer to babysit someone's kids for a weekend in May.  You could bring the trash cans in for the neighbor in Feb.  You could promise to add an extra hug into your visits with a family member whose Love Language is physical touch.  I see my mom every weekday, and my husband suggested I say goodbye this way.  It felt awkward to change a habit at first, but now it feels good! I can put it in my calendar to send a monthly email to my introverted friend who loves her words of affirmation in writing.

I'm so grateful for a daughter who was willing to take four days out of her busy schedule.  It was better than any million dollar present would have been!  Sometimes a moment is worth a thousand promises!

Last Halloween, First Thanksgiving

Halloween has never been my favorite holiday.  I enjoyed it fine, but I didn't anxiously await its coming like Christmas.  So when designing the holiday schedule for the kids spending time with both sets of parents, we chose to reduce changes in the routine and just left Halloween in the regular routine rather than add exchanges and such.

It turns out, though, that because of how the calendar falls, it was our last trick-or-treat night with the girls until they are teens.  I don't know if they'll still want to go then.  My family said that if I was too old to go with Dad, then we were too old to go at all (with the other teen agers).  I told the girls about that.  They asked why.  I told them about some of the stuff teenagers are known to do on Halloween.  They thought that such pranks were stupid.  I sure hope that sticks!

So, we made the most of it.  We took pictures and video.  We set it up to go trick-or-treating with a friend of each girl.  We started with the younger daughter's friend while it was still light.  Then we stopped by our fairy godmother's house, my parent's house (for a picture and 2 liter bottles of root beer), my sister-in-law's place.  Last, we went with the older daughter's friend and her family.  This was close enough to our house that my husband went to get the dog.  The girls dressed up the dog, since the four of us were all decked out.  One girl was a "princess cowgirl thingy" and the other was a wizard who didn't even need a wand.  I was Sleeping Beauty and my husband was my prince.  We separately found our costumes at a thrift store and without coordinating, ended up with matching princess bodice and prince suit complete with sequins. The girls were so generous with their candy!  I sure wasn't as a kid.

I found a new appreciation for the glories of Halloween.  We'll probably be able to take hay rides together in the future years, but I'll only be able to send angels on the trick-or-treat nights when they go with their mother.

On the other hand, it will be our first Thanksgiving as a family, being able to have the whole day together, the whole weekend enjoying relatives, pigging out, cuddling, and LAUGHING.  Oh how grateful I am!

Medication at 2 Households

Ugh!  We all want our kids to be healthy!  The process of making sure a medication is safe and appropriate for our child is complicated enough.  Then, on top of that, my husband and I have to trust that the parent with whom our children live every other week is giving the medication properly.  We brainstormed with the doctor to come up with an idea to at least make sure she is getting her prescription allergy pill 5 days per week by having her take it at school.  The school doesn't like to give medications that you could give at home. However, they cooperated.  Then, their mom (I'm stepmom) said that she won't go along with this.  It would mean that she would need to bring in pills to the school every other month and NOT give her a morning dose on school days.  We cannot control these things.  No matter how much time and energy and emotion goes into trying to make this work, it won't if the other side is not willing to cooperate.

So what does that mean?  The overall picture here is that our daughter is going to have to grow up a little bit more than a child who lives with both parents and become responsible for taking her medication on time on her own, regardless of where she is.  I have observed how much better she is about remembering at our house, but that is because it is part of her routine in the morning and at night.  They get "checked out"by Dad at night and I do the morning one.  Dad is funny.  He asks all kinds of silly questions around the basic questions, "Did you brush your teeth?  Did you brush your dog's teeth?  Did you brush a monkey?"  They look forward to "check out" and cheerfully make sure that they did all the stuff on the list.  However, I don't know what the routine is at their mom's house, and I don't even know that there is one.  Unfortunately, we are unable to communicate effectively with her about such things.  The counselor has offered to bring up such topics, but that only works if mom comes in to see him with the girls.

Deep breath.  The worst case scenario with this medicine is that it won't be as effective.  This means more snot, snorting, and refusing to blow instead of sniff.  However, it does not mean she will die.  I feel bad about putting extra responsibility on her shoulders right now.  What is the appropriate age for expecting a child to begin being responsible for his/her own self-care routines?  Isn't the concept of age appropriateness generic anyway?  Aren't we supposed to take into account the specific child's maturity, level of responsibility, quirks, behavior, patterns, and intelligence?  If I were her mom and we were her only primary caretakers, at what point would we tire of reminding her to take her medicine?

All these questions don't really count here.  Our situation is what it is.  I can not control anything beyond our time with our girls every other week for a week at a time.  I can hope that the time we have together will have a positive and permanent effect that she will carry with her into her own everyday life.  In that life, I hope she is able to feed herself healthy foods and take her vitamins or medicine and brush her teeth each day.  My mom says that raising two girls the same way turned out very different for each of her daughters, so you just have to let go of how it all turns out.  All I can do is get the prescription filled, enjoy my husband's funny "check out" questions, and praise the girls for remembering things on their own.  During the weeks that they aren't with us, I will send angels to be with them and make sure I'm taking my own vitamins.

Mental Health

As a birth mother who got to choose the adoptive parents for the little baby I gave up 22 years ago, I appreciate that those wonderful parents have good mental health.

I was naive and clueless back then about mood and personality disorders, let alone other mental health issues.  I know more now and deal with it during my parenting of my two wonderful step daughters.  I send angels with them when they are not with us and try not to worry all the time.

However, I didn't have to worry about that with the daughter I gave up for adoption.  I knew she was in safe hands.  I'm assuming that the adoption lawyer/agency did some pre-checks before offering them to me as a possibility.  I hope so anyway.  Either that, or I lucked out.

I'm just grateful that she has grown into a beautiful, wise, mentally healthy adult, thanks to her parents!