Parenthood - Week 515: Taking Care of Buffy

It started with the early mornings. 

Usually, I would take Buffy out before I went to bed around 10:30 pm, and then in the morning, around when I was getting ready for work, at 6:30 or so, Buffy would get up and want to go out. Often it would be later. Then, about a month ago, Buffy started getting up early, needing to go out.

Around 3:30 or 4:00 am, I would wake to Buffy whining from Ollie and Ethan’s bedroom, where she liked to sleep. So I would open their door, and she would go downstairs, and I would let her out. Then, after she came back in, I would go back to bed for a couple of hours. Other times it would be closer to when I would get up, so it didn’t make sense to me to try to go to bed.

It was annoying, but I figured it was part of the deal with having an older dog. It was the least I could do to help out my puppy. Then we started noticing that Buffy was eating less food. So Diana took Buffy to the veterinarian. Two things were concerning: her weight and her heart.

Buffy is a small dog, under 20 lbs, so when she loses a couple of pounds, it’s a big deal, and this is exactly what happened. The other issue Buffy was that her heart was enlarged. So we got Buffy on heart medication, and I started doing all I could to make Buffy’s food more appealing.

I got some dog food seasoning products sprinkled on dog food to make it more appealing, and I started mixing in small pieces of meat or broth. It’s worked. Over the past couple of weeks, Buffy has started eating more consistently, and she’s been sleeping longer and not needing to go out until after I was up. Soon, we will have Buffy follow-up visit with the veterinarian and see how her weight and heart medication is doing.

There were nights that I slept light, not wanting to miss hearing Buffy’s whines, afraid that I wouldn’t hear her and get up and let her out. I worry more about her overall. There are extra things to think about. We must manage her medication, be more thoughtful about her food and check in with her.

Sometimes Buffy goes to bed with the boys before she has had her medicine, so I wake her up and carry her downstairs. I need to coat her pills with peanut butter so that she will eat them. I find this really gross because I used to be allergic to peanuts and have a strong aversion to the smell, but I power through. Buffy doesn’t hear as well as she used to, so after I make her a meal, I pick her up and put her in front of her food, especially with specially prepared meals she digs in.

Buffy continues to do so much for us, and I’m glad we can do things to make her feel better.

Buffy will always be our special puppy. I'm happy to show her love by taking care of her. 

Year 13: Week 25 - Coming Back From A Hard Day

Thursday was a hard day. Things that students did, for some reason, affected me more than they should have. There were unforeseen situations and new challenges, and I had a lot on my mind.

This was a day where things that happened in school stayed with me into the evening, and it wasn’t until late after my children went to bed that I fully understood why I felt so deeply about the things that happened at school.

As I sat in the parking lot Friday morning, I thought, “How do I bounce back?” It felt a like a choice. Whether I had a good day was going to be up to me, and I thought about what I had been taught about teaching and what I knew about myself and remembered some keys to having a better day.

“Do one thing at a time.”

When the to-do list seems overwhelming, do one thing at a time. That’s all you can do. Think about what tasks you can do, write them out, and just get started. It’s a push like one step up a mountain, but each task that gets done makes things feel easier to handle, like looking down at the path and seeing how high you have climbed. Looking at a to-do list with tasks crossed out is a motivating feeling.

“Reboot”

One reason Thursday was challenging is that one class had many students having issues regulating their behavior. So when that class came into music on Friday, and they were not having to behave appropriately, I had the students leave the room and review classroom norms in the hallways.

Reestablishing expectations is great for the students and also teachers. Values expressed through norms of care, respect, and love should be present in all teachers; sometimes, we forget to remind our students and ourselves that our work comes out of love.

 

“Share Joy”

I love Motown music, and I’ve been fascinated by “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” recently. So I showed my students some video clips of performances of this song, and I geeked out in front of them. Because of my genuine enthusiasm, my students got really into the song, and we had some great conversations about why it was awesome.

We did drum circle, and I enjoyed the experience myself and told my students how special it is to play instruments together and share in the unique experience of making music.

Friday ended up being a good day.

The best way to improve things is to “make them better.” Passivity doesn’t help. You must put in the effort to change how things feel for you and your students. In that effort, you find your way and power to make change.

Parenthood - Week 514: Putting Lucas To Bed

Lucas comes into the room excited to read a book. 

I have already turned the room light off and turned on his lamp and nightlight. Sometimes he wants to read the book we read the night before, but tonight he wants a new book. Lucas walks over to the closet and points up, “book.”

I put my hands underneath his armpits and lift him facing away from me. I slowly move him across the different bookshelves closet. At some point, he grunts and reaches out. I move him closer, and he carefully puts his finger on the spine of the book that he wants me to read.

I put Lucas down, and he walks over to his bed as I pull the book off the shelf.

Lucas fell out of his bed a couple of times after he got moved into a twin-sized bed, so Diana put a bumper on the side of his bed open to the room. It’s a long stiff pillow that is tucked under the sheet. Even though I initially thought this was pointless, it does keep him in bed as he sleeps.

It’s cute. Because of this bumper, Lucas struggles to get into bed, so as he has one leg hanging off the bed, trying to climb in, I give him a little push, and he rolls into bed.

I climb into bed with Lucas, who lies to my right. Sometimes he wants his stuffed goose with him. Other times he doesn’t seem to care. This night as he tucks in close to me, with concerns, he says, “Mickey?” I realize he’s talking bout his Mickey Mouse stuffed toy. “I’ll get it, and it’s downstairs. Wait here.”

I get out of bed and run downstairs, and when I come back with his Mickey Mouse toy, he smiles and reaches his hands out. As I get back into bed with him, I tuck Mickey next to him, but he points to the end of the bed. I figured it out. He wants Mickey at the foot of the bed. I prop him up at the end of the bed so Lucas could see him. Lucas looks at me, satisfied, and I start reading to him.

Sometimes Lucas asks me to reread a page, and other times he wants me to pause so he can look at a picture. This night he does a little of both. I don’t completely understand what he is getting out of this book, but he is actively listening and trying to figure something out.

After the book is done, Lucas still looks like he is concentrating.

“Do you want to read your book while daddy reads his?” “Yes.”

I pull the novel I’m reading from the top of the bedpost and start reading as Lucas looks at his book. After a couple of minutes, Lucas pushes the book away and cuddles up to me, leaning his head against my shoulder.

“I love you, Lucas.”

“I. Lub you too..” 

 I continue to read my book as I feel the weight of his body settle into mine, and I hear his breathing slow down and get heavier.

After about ten minutes, I close my book and look at Lucas. I kiss him on his head and carefully climb out of bed.

I turn off his lamp, close his door, and leave him for the night.

Year 13: Week 24 - Why I Love Hiring

"I love this work."

This was the first thing that came to mind when I was recently asked why I wanted to be on a hiring committee. Working on hiring has been some of the most rewarding and challenging work I'veI've done at this school. Also, this work feels powerfully tied to DEIB work, which is central to my approach to education and life.

Seeing someone find success at my school that I picked out of an initial resume sift and supported throughout the hiring process is a beautiful feeling. Of course, I never remind people I helped hire that I did this work for them because their success is theirs. However, I feel particularly warm and pride in the success of these people at my school because of my work during their concerts, hearing studnets' laughter from great learning in their classes, and hearing parents talk about how much they like these teachers.

In many ways, my hiring success is my most incredible legacy at this school.

The challenge of hiring is real and ever-evolving. There is a feeling of pressure and anxiety that comes with every hire. You want to get it right. Mediocre people are difficult to fire in any workplace setting, as are people who are just awful. Over the years, I'veI's come to worry less and less that hiring committees that I'm on will not "get it right." The vast majority of committees I've been on have hired great people. I enter my hiring work this spring with great confidence, born out of a depth of experience, that my team will hire the "right" person.

One crucial thing that I've learned is that the person you hire is the "right" person is very much what you do with this person once they are hired. A "perfect candidate" can end up leaving a company if the onboarding isn't done well and the community doesn't rally around this person and measure their success in the success of this new hire. Also, a candidate that some people may have reservations about can raise these concerns with support, empathy, and care. Getting an effective new person in your community is only partially accomplished by a good "hire" a good amount of the work is done after that process is completed.

Over the past decade, I've been involved with hiring at my school. The process has changed dramatically, and I've learned that hiring can often be fraught with bias, including racism and sexism. After going through multiple trainings on hiring, I've realized bias within myself (e.g., showing a preference for who went to the same school I did) and recognizing bias in others. I have also learned about many hiring practices that can be inequitable. For example, sometimes people look down on people who have resumes that show a gap in work. The reality is that this practice can often be sexist as often women have to take time off from work to have children or care for a loved one.

I've been challenged to move past the language of "a good fit," which can sometimes be coded language for prejudicial judgments, and understand why not sharing interview questions with candidates isn'tisn't inclusive of diverse thinkers. Also, I've had my judgment called out and forced with each hiring to reconsider how I view candidates, my school, and myself.

One of the reasons I enjoy being part of hiring is because of the responsibility this work brings me; it also brings me the power to make my school more diverse and inclusive. I have earned my place at the hiring table with hard work. The resumes I have to look through feel daunting. But, I'm excited about the work, the conversations, and bringing someone new into my school community.

Healthy school communities bring new people into their buildings. Hiring is a feature, not a flaw. With the right person, we are challenged to grow and be better for our students and ourselves.

Parenthood: Week 513 - The Things They Won't Remember

Why do things with your children that they will not remember? 

Most of what you do with your child in the early years of their life they will not remember. At best, people take impressions, smells, thoughts, and feelings before 3 years old, if that. It's not until five years old that memories that children will carry with them their entire lives will form and stay with them. Three years is a lot of time, and a lot of life people need to remember. 

Children will not remember that first birthday party, early discoveries, and the carefully planned magical vacation. Because life can be so hard with little ones, it's easy to get discouraged. It takes so much sometimes with a child to do things, to go out and take them places, and the reality that they will not remember the experiences you are trying to set up for them only adds the level of exacerbation that comes with doing so much for the little one in your life.

Scientifically, we know that in many ways, the critical years in development occur before the age of three. This is where most language acquisition occurs. It's a crucial time in emotional development, and along with the early teenage years is the most dramatic physical change that humans go through. Creating a stimulating, diverse, and emotionally fulfilling early life pays off in almost every aspect of life as children grow up. No, they will not remember the hugs, the loving words, and the late nights helping your child sleep, but they will be a happier and healthier adult because of all you did for them.

The other reason we do this for our children is in ways they will not remember and may never know because this is what it means to be a parent. There are three levels of care that we give to others. The first requires thanks and recognition to feel validated. The second level asks that we witness the person experiencing what we did for them but do not need credit. And the last group is where we do something for another where we do not ask for thanks or need to witness our work's results.

Parenthood asks us to live in the second and third levels of doing for others. It asks us to search inside for the motivation to do for our children, day after day and year after year, and not give up, no matter how little they know about what we do or how hard it is. This is, in essence, what it truly means to love.

As parents, we can let the lack of gratitude and recognition lead to bitterness. This feeling compounded can lead to strain in relationships that can last a lifetime. If we as parents spend our lives looking for something back from our children, we will forever be searching because there is nothing our children can do to pay back for what parents do.

We have to learn to do for our children as much for them as for ourselves. At the end of the day, there is a feeling of knowing that you did right by your children and did everything you could to care for them. That smile, a laugh, a hug, a moment with your child, however fleeting, happened because of what you did for your children. This needs to be enough.

It is so hard to be enough because so much of parenthood feels like what we cannot do. After all, the responsibility of parenting is so much, and for so many, the timing and circumstance of parenthood are not an active choice. However, this is our regret, our choices, and our lives. This is work we need to process and come to terms with. It cannot be on our children to bring validation to our lives; we need to get it to ourselves.

Our partners can't make us happy, our jobs can't make us happen, and our children can't make us happy. They will forget so much of the struggles, the pain, and the work of parenting. They will forget joyous vacations and magical moments. But these beautiful experiences will create something deep within that lets them know they are loved. 

All that we give as parents without expectations, regret, and bitterness is how we come to know true happiness. In doing for others, we find ourselves and the true nature of being a human being, unselfish, present, seeing the best of the world in our actions, and knowing love as much from the love we give as the love we receive.

Year 13: Week 23 - Back To Beginning Band

Last week, my 6th-grade and 7th-grade band had their first performance. This was a big deal. Any first band performance is an event. Students start learning instruments at the beginning of the school year, making sounds that only a band teacher can tolerate. Then after only a couple of short months, they are making music. It’s a miraculous process that happens year after year worldwide, or at least it did. 

But these perfromances felt different.

The pandemic put a hold on band programs. When schools shut down in March 2020, bands went remote like all other school programs. Remote learning had different effects on different academic subjects, but it was devastating to concert bands. The primary way to learn how to play in a band is to play in a band in person; nothing online could replace this.

When the fall of 2020 came, many schools were remote. Some of these schools didn’t offer band, and ones that did had teachers struggling to begin instruments remotely. This was very difficult, and while some teachers found success, the progress in remote learning on the band was a shadow of what in-person instruction would be like.

Then there were the schools like my school that were in-person but did not allow band as part of COVID-19 mitigations. This meant that the 6th graders that year didn’t have a band. Then in the fall of 2021, 7th graders were allowed to start a band, but 6th graders weren’t. And finally, this year, we had a band for all middle school students, meaning we had a beginning 6th-grade and a beginning 7th-grade band.

Starting two beginning bands this year has been exciting, but it’s also been challenging. Not surprisingly, less 7th graders wanted to try something new and different and be in a band more than 6th graders. The fact that the band was perceived as dangerous during the early parts of the pandemic cast a shadow in some people’s minds about band instruments which hurt enthusiasm.

We have had a lot of success, and it’s really important that they can perform for the community, however people in the community really needs to watch two beginning band performances. So I planned two daytime afternoon presentations, one for the 6th-grade band and one for the 7th-grade band. I invited our elementary school classes for each presentation, had a couple of classes come, and then band student families were invited.

Each band played a couple of pieces together, and I also was able to feature students playing solos and doing small ensemble work. This was an excellent way to differentiate and give students the opportunity to perform differently.

Like so many things coming out of the pandemic, these presentations felt like doing something for the first time, even though I had done these performances before the pandemic. There was a feeling of uncertainty. Maybe something changed because of the pandemic; perhaps something broke that we couldn’t fix. However, things went great and proved that music persists, and there are some things the pandemic could not take away from us.

Parenthood: Week 512 - Expert on Vaca?

After taking my children on trips for the better part of the last decade, I've come to some conclusions. First, no matter how well-prepared I am, vacations are challenging. Second, while taking children on trips can be a pain, they have always been worth it. And finally, I am really good at taking kids on vacation. 

It's tough to take kids on trips. Every time we prepared for vacation, we were barely ready. Prepping the house includes cleaning out the refrigeration, cleaning the house, and doing dishes. We did make a couple of trips with Buffy and Ollie when Ollie was a baby, but now that Buffy is older and we have more kids, we don't take Buffy on trips with us. Because of this, we must prepare Buffy to stay with someone else, which takes work.

Then there is packing. It's not a big deal to pack for myself, but packing for the kids is a lot. We have to consider their needs as they don't think through packing themselves. Ollie, our oldest, can do some packing himself but, like Lucas, who is three, cannot comprehend packing or physically do it.

If all we had to pack for our children were clothing, it would still be a lot of work, but there is so much more. We have to pack diapers, wipes, snacks, coloring books, medicine, Aquaphor, toiletries, water bottles, books, and a stroller, among other things. Then there is the technology. Ollie has his Nintendo Switch, and we have two iPads for my other sons. There is work in this prep making sure whatever games or videos they want to play or watch are downloaded and ready to go and that everything is charged. Also, we have to pack headphones.

Packing snacks are essential. Food is a primary way of keeping kids in good moods when traveling—often, when things aren't going well, it's because kids are hungry. However, getting the proper selection of snacks is tricky, and having enough is important, as they take up a lot of space.

Preparing to travel means that almost all of the time, my wife and I stay up late the night before we travel. Getting four or five hours of sleep the night before taking a plane flight is common for us, which compounds the difficulty and anxiety of traveling.

Many little things make traveling with children difficult, and over the years, I've figured out how to manage these things, but that doesn't make it easy. For example, let's take car seats. After traveling with a car seat once, I decided it wasn't worth the hassle of carrying one to the airport, checking it, and carrying it around the airport after. So now we just rent car seats when we rent cars. Yes, this is easier, but getting a car seat in front of the rental car company and installing it is still a process that takes a lot of time.

This is what the experience of traveling with children gets you: the more you do it, the more you learn, and while things are easier, it's never easy. The most significant change over the years has been expectations setting. Things will go wrong when you travel with children. You will need to remember something, and there will be issues. Accepting this as a feature helps you see the tough moments, not as failures, and see the good and the joy of getting away with the little ones.