Being told "I hate you"... and why I lie and say that it doesn't bother me

Time to add another award to my trophy case... Last night one of the kids dropped this bomb: "I hate you. You're mean." That ups it to 3 out of 5 of the kids in the house who have said that to me. My response to each of those children upon uttering it has been vastly different. When one of the boys said it, I laughed. When one of the girls said it, I said "Yeah, I'm aware of that based on how you treat me," and then I laughed. This time when one of the other girls said it, it launched World War 3 in our home. Ugh.

I, of course, try to act like it doesn't bother me at all. I'm the All Powerful Mom so I should expect my kids to at least dislike me. I'm the one who makes them do chores, finish homework, and leave the room BEFORE they pass gas. So it's normal that they would hate the person who is always calling them on the carpet over being... well, a child. But in reality it hurts. It's not like I *like* being a policeman all day. I would much rather not have to tell them what to do. But then I would be resolving myself to live in squalor, and that just can't happen. And so I put on my World's Ok-est Mom badge every day and patrol my town, only to be spit upon by the first yellow-bellied son-of-a-gun who dares threaten my authority in this po-dunk town. (I feel like that painted a really nice picture of me as a sheriff who is imparting justice rather than a Hitler-like dictator my kids might see me as.)

I can wallow in feeling sorry for myself over this, but then I would be a hypocrite. You see, I've been reading Hatchet to my class this month and the main character imparts this lesson about half way through the book and several days deep into  his adventure of being stranded in the Canadian wilderness: "Feeling sorry for yourself doesn't work." You are so right, fictitious character, Brian Robeson. Not only does it not work, it doesn't help. Nothing will be accomplished by me moping.

And so, for anyone else who has had to hear their children say that they hated them and then act like it doesn't bother you when really you are seething inside and questioning your worth as a person... here is a list of things to do to make yourself feel better...

1. Hug the other children who don't currently hate you. They will have a deeper love for you as they see their position in the family move up a notch due to the hater-child moving down.

2. Sleep. Seriously. It fixes most things. And if you are too mad to shut your body down due to the adrenaline coursing through your veins, then take a Benadryl or Tylenol PM (which, FYI, is just Tylenol with Benadryl in it. I just saved you money. You're welcome.) because it's better for EVERYONE if you stop talking and sleep instead.

3. Go to work.  Much like it was during my childhood, my solace in these tough times is my classroom, where on any given day someone is thanking me for being awesome and confirming that I don't suck. Sometimes kids at school say they hate you too, but for every kid who hates you, there are at least 10 that don't. I don't always math well, but even I know that in school the odds are stacked in my favor, 10%  is SO MUCH BETTER than 60% when comparing kids who hate me vs. kids who may have had that sentiment, but have had the decency to not say it out loud.

4. Hang on to every compliment people give you for the next few days and stack them into a compliment tower in your mind until you feel those compliments out weigh the hater-child's hate of you. I especially love compliments from my students. I hang all my positive notes on my bulletin board. Every week I have a 'Radical Rocket' (person of the week) and the entire class writes that person a nice letter which I make into a booklet to give the person. I want them all to have notes like I do to cheer me up when I'm down. It helps!

6. Use your stress productively. Why just today I impressed myself by created a Power Point presentation for a workshop I'm giving that isn't even happening until next Wednesday! Who knew anger could be so productive!

5. Pinterest it all away. Or read it all away. Escape into a world of possibilities and what if's.

6. Run. Or do whatever hobby you  have that makes you feel like a bad-ass. Cause if you make it through today, you pretty much are one.

7. And finally, brace yourself... because I know that if I'm doing my job right, and holding on to the title of World's Ok-est Mom, then I'll end up at 5 for 5. Yep, that's 100% of my kids having said those words, by the time they are all teenagers. /sigh


















^^^^^Exit slips written by my students. Today, no less! These children are special. They see the truth. I would like to clone them.

Gold Stars.. and other lies I love about school

I can remember the first day of kindergarten. Seriously. My dad took me to school and my little brother sat down next to me at a table that said my name on it. When it was time for them to leave me, my little brother cried and I waved goodbye. From the first day I set foot in a classroom, I knew it was were I belonged. I loved everything about school: singing the hokey-pokey, rolling out play dough, playing with my friends at recess. But the thing I loved the most were the proverbial "gold stars." You know what I'm talking about. The atta-boys and pats on the back for following the rules. The smiles and nods from the teacher when you did things right. The stickers on my paper for writing my letters better than anyone in my class. The look in the teacher's eye when I was able to read with little to no instruction. The more I did, the more I wanted to do. I didn't fully understand what was happening at the time.Little 6 year old me in My Little Pony velcro shoes and a boy hair cut had no way of knowing. But as an adult I now see clearly. I was falling prey to the first lie we all learn in school: if you are smart, good things will happen.

As I climbed the grade school ladder to middle and high school my need for stars grew even bigger, all the while kids around me got smarter and smarter. It's easy to be at the front of the class when the main objective for the day is to tie your shoes and get in the right bus line. Much harder to stand out as an over achiever when kids are studying subjects like chemistry and AP English. Having hit my intellectual peak somewhere around 6th grade, I had to circumvent the system and figured out that I would just have to work hard. Completed Running Start. Finished college early. Started teaching 6th grade at 21. Got my masters degree at 24. All the while piling my stars up and feeling like I was pretty darn special. And thus was born lie number two: if you work hard, good things will happen.

But then something unexpected happened. I got bored. School wasn't challenging. Even teaching wasn't so hard. How could something I spent my entire childhood perfecting be difficult for me? I lived and breathed school. But something was missing. That's when I decided to up the ante and challenge myself with a task I knew I would excel at: Motherhood.

Looking back, I  know exactly what I thought. I read all the books. I watched my friends with kids and took mental (and maybe even some real) notes. I had been good at so many things, how could this be any different? I like to think the person in charge of the universe was somewhere laughing as they watched me think all these crazy thoughts. Laughing and wanting to play a little trick. Because what happened over the next 11 years could be seen as humorous, or horribly depressing.

I found out quickly that there were very few gold stars in raising babies. Parenting gave way to me realizing that being smart and working hard were not, in this case, going to just *make* good things happen. For every small victory there were at least three catastrophes. And even when I had something good happen, there wasn't anyone there to stamp my paper, or give me a ribbon. It seemed like no one cared if I changed a diaper, or rescued a toddler from a precarious situation, least of all the very people I was doing a mediocre job of keeping alive and well. The gold stars I once worked so hard for faded into the background of my life. None of them meant anything anymore. Who was I if I couldn't win at something? What had I become if I couldn't prove myself in this area of my life? How would I ever get back to a place where I'm good at something? Not just good. The best. How does one earn the title of "Best Mom" anyway?  And is there a short cut? I'm embarrassed to say that for many years I tried to find the answer to this. And once again, failed.

Somewhere in the past five years I decided to bow out of the "Best Mom" competition. I quit trying to prove I was the best mom and started being "simple mom." Being there for my kids when they got hurt. Listening to them when they talked to me. None of my kids have done anything particularly amazing by the world's standards, but I started seeing everything they did as amazing in it's own right. Not because of who they are better than, but just because of who they themselves are. And through that process I discovered that maybe the gold stars weren't a lie after all. Maybe they were a myth, like the tooth fairy, and Santa Claus, designed to help kids make sense of a world that really doesn't make sense at all. All this time I had been trying to greedily gather more stars, only to realize that it was my turn to start handing them out.

You Should Start a Blog

Numerous people have told me "You should start a blog..." My belief is that some people have an aversion to my propensity to share even the most uncomfortable details about my life on Facebook, where I like to push the limits of just how many characters a person can include in one single post. Those same people would prefer to see my life lived out in the confines of a blog page, rather than on their news feed.

And so this blog is born from the discomfort of my friends and family who have thus far put up with my verbose posts, and maybe even commented in an effort to humor me. It's been a few years in the works, in my mind anyway, but I could never really decide what to write about. Should I focus on the struggles blessings of being a mom? Write about my kids? Write about my childhood? Where do I start? Do I tell my kids' stories, or are they theirs to tell? Who's perspective should I write from? I toyed with the idea of writing a children's book about my daughter's shenanigans, but I could never really get that to sound right. Then it hit me one day, whilst at work, doing what I do best... talking about myself. I just need to write about what I naturally talk about the most in my life: Myself. There is plenty comedic fodder in the stories about my struggles to live a normal life, every day.

I like to write. I like words. They can cheer a person up, heal a boo-boo, encourage the most discouraged person, and most of all, can shine a flashlight into the recesses of our souls, where most of our thoughts like to hide. So, here we go... let's play hide and seek...