My teen tried to kill me....

I recently learned a hard lesson. I mean DIF-E-CULT. It was a lazy Saturday afternoon, the kids and I were hanging out and we decided to take the dogs to the beach. I wanted to clean out our van real quick, so I had all the doors open and was throwing trash away and tidying up in there.

It occurred to me as I was re-organizing some things in the back that I had a new bulb to replace the reverse light that I suspected had gone out. Well, I’m about to take off on an adventure far from home, and I certainly don’t want to get pulled over by the po po, right? Right. So, it was a good idea to take a few seconds to pop out the old bulb and pop in the new one.

But, I needed someone to put the car in reverse so I could tell if the light was working. Since we live out in the country, it is not uncommon for kids to begin driving around their property as young as 12, so I thought it was a perfect opportunity to put Cameron behind the wheel and get her used to the basics of the car. I thought it would be exciting for her! I called her outside, briefly explained what I was trying to do and told her to get in. By this point, I was feeling rushed and I’m ashamed to admit I was a bit snappy with her when she expressed hesitation. I said something like “You’re not listening, I need you to listen!” I again briefly explained the brake, the gear shift, and that you have to put your foot on the brake before the car will shift into reverse. I think I forgot to explain anything beyond that… So, I switch out the bulb and still standing at the back of the van I say “Ok, put it in reverse now…” The rest of what happened seemed to be in slow motion. Cameron put her foot on the brake, as instructed. She shifted the van into reverse, as instructed. She looked back at me over the seat, eyes huge and fearful. The car began to roll backwards. The eyes looking back at me got even more huge, and even more fearful. Before I could say “brake!” she panicked and slammed her foot onto the brake, but she was still staring at me in terror, and hit the gas instead. Luckily I thought quickly and jumped sideways. I almost got out of the way, but the wheels were turned slightly and the van swung around, the corner hitting me hard enough to knock me to the ground. She tried again to slam on the brake, but still looking at me, in complete horror now, she hit the gas a second time. As I was getting up off the ground, the van knocked me down again…then I saw her face. My child was white as a sheet, stuck in the moving vehicle with absolutely no clue what to do…and she thought she’d killed her mother!

At that point my only thought was that I had to save my baby! Somehow I had to get myself into that vehicle! As I come up off the ground again, I hurled myself toward the open door of the van. The plan that raced through my mind in that instant was to push the brake with my hand to stop the van and save Cameron from this devastating situation I had put her in, and whatever would happen next. But as I came up, the open door hit me hard and knocked me down yet again. In that moment, the van slammed into a tree on the other side of the driveway and came to a stop. Thank the stars! Cameron jumped out and ran to the back, jumping up and down, crying hysterically “Are you alright? Mom, are you alright?” As I stood up that final time, I felt a very strange sensation in my thigh. Not a pain, really, more like a popping or ripping of some sort. Immediately my thigh felt swollen and my shorts were completely soaked with some kind of oily clear fluid. There was a tiny bit of blood, but mostly it was clear, and there was ALLOT of it. I had never seen anything like it before, and I knew that probably meant it was bad. But before I could deal with that, I urgently needed to reassure Cam that I was okay.

I hugged her, assured her that none of what just happened was her fault, I told her I was so so sorry I had put her in that position, but I was fine. I returned the van to it’s parking place, noticing that about 3″ of the corner of the door, metal and I now noticed very dirty, was wet. I remember thinking “That must be what got my leg…” I turned off the van and we went inside together. Of course Skylar could immediately tell something had happened and wanted to know what was going on. I explained that we had a little accident and something was wrong with my leg, but it’s really no big deal, everything is fine and they should go watch tv. I kept calmly repeating “Everything is fine.” Then I asked Cam to call their Dad. You don’t know this about me yet, but I am a huge baby. When it comes to broken bones, cuts or any serious booboo’s, I just can’t handle it. Really, when something happens I feel exactly like a six year old child that needs her mommy to handle things. As you can imagine, I was so afraid. But I had to see, so I gathered bandages, medical tape, scissors, towels anything I could think of that I might need to quickly cover it up and hide it away so I didn’t have to look at it anymore. Once I got it all together, I locked myself in the bathroom and stood on a towel to remove my shorts…and I almost fainted when pieces of my leg fell out of my shorts onto the floor. I’m talking really big chunks of my leg fell off (not THAT big, but it sure felt like it, and frankly I think ANY piece of you falling on the floor is too big.). The wound was toward the back of the side of my thigh, and I was somewhat relieved that the angle was wrong for me to see it easily in the mirror. But I didn’t try very hard either. I just grabbed a hand towel and pressed it to the wound, at which point I felt another piece loosely bouncing against my leg. OMG! I was literally holding my leg together with a hand towel! Talk about GROSS!

I heard Cam say “No, everything’s fine…” on the phone to her dad. In my mind I’m screaming “NO THE HELL IT IS NOT FINE!” But I calmly said, “honey, let me talk to daddy please.” When I got him on the phone I walked away and told him “The GIRLS are fine. I am not. We had an accident and I need your help.”

He said he would be there in 15 minutes, he was in his car and on the way. After hanging up I suddenly realized I didn’t have any pants on. I can’t have my ex coming over when I don’t have any freaking pants on! I found some shorts that would be easy to slide into and short enough that he could see the wound and help me bandage it.

When he arrived he followed me into the bathroom saying “let me see! let me see it!” but I was married to this man for 8 years and I know he is a mega drama queen. He blows things hugely out of proportion, and I panic in response…but I really didn’t need any help in that department! I shut the bathroom door behind him and said “I need you to NOT SAY A WORD. Don’t react in any way! I need you to quickly put a bandage on this so I can get to the hospital. BUT DON’T SAY A WORD. If you panic, I will panic.” So I removed the towel…and of course the look on his face made me panic. To his credit, he remained very calm as he said “put the towel back, we can’t bandage that. We need to get you to the hospital.” Well that’s just freaking GREAT!

After a brief phone call to a paramedic buddy of his, he told me that he would take the kids and I could drive myself to the emergency room but I needed to hurry because if the fat gets into the bloodstream…blahblahblah I’m not listening! I have to drive myself? What? Ok, I can do this!

It was a 40 minute drive, and my blood pressure was through the roof when I got there. The nurse tried to send me away it looked so bad, but the Dr. said he could do it and worked on stitching me up for about an hour. Then they sent me on my merry way, bruised, battered and ashamed of being so stupid.

All in all, we were so lucky that day! If I hadn’t gotten out from behind the van… if Skylar had been standing beside me like she normally is…if Cam hadn’t hit the tree and stopped…for days Cameron and I both had nightmares about all the ways it could have gone, and we are both very thankful it happened the way it did, despite the trauma, the yuck, the stitches and the 6″ scar it left behind. Oh, and I broke my big toe too. That guy will never be the same, and neither will my kid! The dogs never made it to the beach either…

Perfectionism vs the real world

Per·fec·tion (as defined by google dictionary) pərˈfekSH(ə)n/ noun

1. the condition, state, or quality of being free or as free as possible from all flaws or defects.”the satiny perfection of her skin”

2. the action or process of improving something until it is faultless or as faultless as possible. “among the key tasks was the perfection of new mechanisms of economic management”

3. a person or thing perceived as the embodiment of perfection. “I am told that she is perfection itself”

A big hurdle for me has always been striving for unobtainable perfection. As a young child, I often imagined what my adult life would be like once I was free of the people who controlled of my life. I wanted a husband, 2.5 kids, a beautiful home with a landscaped yard and a dog. I would live a life full of peace and beauty, my kids would never misbehave and my husband would be my biggest fan and supporter. I would have an amazing career and no money troubles. Back then my life was very chaotic and full of both emotional and literal turmoil, so my imagined version looked smooth, clean, organized and calm.

Imagine my surprise when I realized none of that was possible? Well, I have 2 kids, the rest not so much. As a young adult, I learned that life is messy…no matter how hard I tried I could not keep up with all the work required to make my life smooth and clean. There was always clutter in a corner somewhere or dust covering something…who knew?!

I worked hard and bought a little home for myself, and I mean LITTLE. It was tiny, and old, but I got a super deal on it. I loved how quaint it was, with it’s brick fireplace wall and antique floor to ceiling carved oak mantle. Unfortunately I also had four inside dogs, so my home was cute but never ever completely clean. And books…I was like Beauty with books literally stacked every few feet, collecting dust and dog hair of course.

Then I met “the one”, and no I did not think he was perfect. For some reason I did believe our life together would be, though. Really, I had these romantic notions of us helping each other overcome our past and rising above like a pair of beautiful phoenixes to fly off into the blissful sunset together. The reality was more like a pair of wounded buzzards fighting over the carcass of our life together. I think at least a small part of the reason the marriage failed was because of the vision I had in my own head of what a perfect marriage looked like (well, and my trust issues and his narcissism, but i’ll save those for another post…). I went into our marriage expecting it to be fantastic, but what I got was real, raw, deceitful, dirty and painful. Not at all perfection.

Fast forward a few years past births, deaths, foreclosure, early onset dementia and divorce. After the separation of our family, I went back to college with visions of a perfect life for the kids and I after I earned my bachelors degree. I would begin a new career, make plenty of money and raise my kids as a strong, independent and educated woman. The reality was that I struggled dearly as a single parent to pay for and finish college, ended up with a huge amount of student loan debt and when I graduated I literally had no one to come to my graduation ceremony. Not my parents, not my best friend, not my ex-husband. Not one single soul out of all the people in my life thought it was important enough to even offer to bring my children to see me walk across the stage. I didn’t attend my own graduation because it was a sad day for me, not the perfectly happy one I had imagined. I know I should have demanded they come, insisted they bring my girls to watch their Mama walk…but the energy required to overcome the sadness born of feeling so lonely was more than I could muster.

Perfectionism is everywhere we look, images of what we should look like and should have are literally all around us and it’s hard not to compare our actual lives with those we see on tv, in magazines and on billboards. That’s just marketing though. Our society is so strongly based on economics, products and services, that we are bombarded constantly by these images telling us we need what they are selling to achieve perfection. It’s not real. Those models are literally photo-shopped and airbrushed. The perfect lives we see in shows and movies? They’re all scripted. Real life has no script…that I’ve found. If you know of one, please tell me where I can find it!

Even when I ignore the images, I still have a very clear picture in my head of how things should look. Unfortunately getting to that place has always been the hard part. Historically, as a person who suffers from depression, I have really good days in which I can clearly see what I want, plan the steps to get there and feel like I am accomplishing allot towards that end. Then the lack of perfection in my life gets the better of me and the negative voice (that would be me, by the way) in my head tells me to quit and points out all the things wrong with me, all the ways I fall short and all the reasons I won’t be able to do what I’m trying to. Then I go through several days of not even trying. I do the absolute least that is required of me to make it through the day…and feel like I don’t have the energy to do more. Then I have to start all over again.

Remember definition #2 of the word perfection from above: “the action or process of improving something.” I think the key truly is to celebrate progress. Every little step counts! I’ve learned (am still learning) to cheer myself up on those bad days. Today I put jazz music on the stereo, started a load of laundry and made myself cinnamon swirl pancakes for breakfast. I don’t usually cook for myself when the girls are gone, but today I needed to. On the days I feel like giving up and have no energy, I force myself to spend at least 10 minutes working on something productive. Then I do it again. And again. Eventually I feel I’ve accomplished something, because I have! That’s progress!

Using the vision of your perfect life as a tool, a goal or a best case scenario, is not a bad thing as long as you acknowledge that it is fluid and elusive and true perfection can’t actually be achieved because: IT DOES NOT EXIST. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep trying, but we must learn to be flexible, forgive moments of weakness or self doubt, don’t beat ourselves up over our perceived failures and above all, celebrate progress and embrace all that is good along the way. Every moment of happiness matters, and I believe if we focus on those good moments the bad ones will fall away and become less and less. And always remember, perception is everything! “Sometimes life can be as bitter as dragon tears. But whether dragon tears are bitter or sweet depends entirely on how each person perceives the taste.” – Dean Koontz

10 Ways to motivate your teenager

My daughter, Cameron, just turned 13. She is officially a teen now, which is new to both of us. We’ve talked allot about what is “typical” of teenagers, what we should both expect and why some of what’s considered “normal” teen behavior isn’t acceptable to me. But I listen, and we talk. I consider her wants and we compromise…sometimes to the tune of her grumbling, but so far it’s working. Having never done this before, my theories are based on research, intuition and remembering what it was actually like to be a teenager. Can you remember that? For me it was not fun, and the list below is my attempt to help my daughter have a completely different teenage experience than I did. Here is my teenage survival list:

1. Listen Listening is huge. Remember what being a teenager felt like? For me, no one seemed to care. They didn’t listen and treated me as if I didn’t matter simply because I was young. If someone treats you this way, does it motivate you? It certainly doesn’t me, it makes me angry. 2. Give them chores I don’t expect TONS of work out of my kids, but they have been doing chores for several years now. And I don’t give them an allowance. I believe there are certain responsibilities that are required of all of us to keep our home comfortable and efficient, and you don’t get paid to do those things. That said, I’m not stingy with my money. If they need or want something I take that into consideration and provide it if I can. Being a single parent has lent itself to always being on a fairly tight budget. They’re used to that, so their expectations tend to be reasonable, usually. As my now teen has grown older she has really stepped up and into her chores. She knows what I expect of her, mostly laundry and taking care of the animals, and she does it beautifully and without my having to yell at her about it or even prod much. Usually. 3. Don’t let them sleep all day Sleeping all day is such a waste of time! I know MOST teens stay up all night and sleep all day. It’s normal. I did it, too. However, I am not ok with mine doing that. She really likes to sleep in, and I let her within reason. She has a bedtime even in summer, although it’s usually around 1:30 am, which is later than I like and not as late as she likes, but that’s compromise! The big thing is she cannot sleep past noon. This she hates, but I don’t want her sleeping the entire day away! Not staying up all night helps because she has gotten plenty of sleep.

4. Help them set personal goals that don’t involve electronics Helping them set goals and expecting them to use their brain, even in the summer, is important to me. As soon as school let out for the summer I realized the break was going to wreak havoc on our motivation, if we let it. I gave them a week or two of laying around watching tv all day, then I posted “Summer Rules” on the fridge. Before they can watch tv (which they do on their phones) they must: get dressed (I’m lax on this one because I totally get wanting to lay around in pj’s), brush their teeth and hair, make their bed, clean something they don’t normally clean and read for 20 minutes. Then in the afternoon they must choose two creative activities.

The options I’ve listed for them are: draw, paint, study another language, sew, write, learn to knit, do a DIY or craft. These are just suggestions though, the idea is to keep their creative juices flowing, and I don’t really care WHAT they choose. Cameron found a photo editing app she likes allot and often chooses to edit fan fiction…I’m absolutely ok with that! She is doing something she loves and it’s creative! Win, Win! I’ve also given them AR goals for the summer, hence the reading every day. Once they’ve finished their books we will go to the school and take AR tests to give them a leg up at the start of the new school year. 5. Insist they brush their teeth Not brushing teeth is just gross. Unfortunately I know that if I didn’t put it on the to-do list, it wouldn’t get done during summer. I have not worked this hard to ensure they don’t have teeth like mine, they’ve never had a cavity, to let that go to heck now!

6. Talk to them Talking to your kids at any age is super important, but especially as they become teens. I am very honest with both my girls, and we discuss serious and taboo subjects like sex and drugs because face it, whether you want to admit it or not they will face these issues among their peers. I feel it’s important that they know what to expect so they are not caught by surprise. It’s equally important that they know you love and respect them, and that you are trying to be supportive and understanding of their struggles. I am conflict avoid-ant, so I will not argue. The few times Cameron has gone full-tantrum-teen on me, I’ve simply said “why don’t you go calm down and then we’ll talk.” In each case she has stormed off, thrown herself on her bed to cry in frustration and then came back 30 minutes later apologizing for acting crazy. She has said more than once that she didn’t even understand why she reacted the way she had.

7. Don’t yell Don’t get me wrong, she has gotten VERY angry with me on occasion, but I never yell and I never ever react out of anger. In this case, my being conflict avoid-ant is a good thing! That strategy seems to help smooth the way to communication once things have cooled down. 8. Hug them every day, whether they want you too or not

I am not an overly affectionate person, but with my children I believe it is important to show them affection every single day. I want them to grow up not only feeling good with physical contact and love, but feeling that they deserve it. the last thing I want is for them to be fearful and resistant like their mom. So I make it a point to hug them every single day, often multiple times. The funny thing I’ve noticed is that Cameron hugs me back more now that she’s older than she ever did as a younger child. She is exuberant in showing her love and affection, and that melts my mommy heart!

9. Praise them all the time It feels so good when someone compliments us, but often people get into the habit of only commenting on negative things or bad behaviors. I drench my girls in praise every chance I get. My theory is that if parents treat their children as if they are amazing, they will feel amazing and therefore will be amazing. And even more importantly, they will think amazing thoughts about themselves: children believe what their parents tell them, right? So far I’ve gotten good results with this strategy, and I hope it continues to go well.

10. Never EVER give up on them

It is so important to NEVER EVER give up on your teenager. The teen years are the hardest of all the times in our lives. The mind, body and brain are all working overtime, struggling with becoming an adult. It is a time of transition, no longer a child but not yet adult, and it is often a very lonely and confusing time. Even if your teen is terrible, acts out and says and does horrible things, remember they sincerely don’t mean to be nasty. Often they don’t know how to ask for your help and support, and they are afraid to seem needy. Who wants to be weak and vulnerable? They think they’re supposed to be and act “grown up,” but really they are still children inside and they deserve your love and support. Often they say terrible things, but that is usually because they don’t know how to regulate their emotions, and the hormones escalate those emotions to the max! The most important thing is to make sure your teenager knows that you love them madly, and that no matter what they do or say that won’t change. That will provide a solid foundation for them, a secure home base, if you will. So many things change during those few years, they can be one thing today and may be something completely different two years from now. The teen years are a crazy roller coaster ride of self exploration. They will change a thousand times, and hopefully eventually they will arrive at a solid conclusion about who they are. It would be so unfair to judge them or abandon them before they’ve had a chance to find themselves. As parents, it is our job to help them through it, not hurt them because of it.