When a child is lost

My heart goes out to Keltoi and his wife on the loss of their wonderful 2-year-old grandson who drowned two weeks ago, and to Christian singer/songwriter Steven Curtis Chapman and his wife on the loss of their 5-year-old daughter who was accidentally run over in their own driveway, by a car driven by their teen son.

I think I may know why they say "survived by" in obituaries.

To me it feels like a terrible travesty when parents and grandparents outlive their children and grandchildren.

Losing a parent is painful enough, but something that can perhaps be looked at philosophically when someone in their 80s or 90s dies. "He lived a full life," perhaps we can say.

In the play (and later movie) Steel Magnolias by Robert Harling (see the IMDB link here http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098384/http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098384/http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098384/) M'Lynn wails that she was always ready to go first. I'm with M'Lynn.

While I was researching an article on Meals on Wheels of Ellis County, I was struck by the differences observed in two elderly women I interviewed. They were about the same age -- late 80s, and I recall.

One woman had 7 children, and she had outlived them all. The other had 10 children, and they were all still living. It's hard to describe (and harder to document as absolute proof) the difference in these two women's attitudes. Asked about their families, one said, "I had seven children and they're all gone." The other said, "I had 10 children and they're all still alive." The one whose children had all predeceased her was actually more fit and mobile, but I would have to say from just that brief meeting that the other one seemed much happier, like she had a purpose as the matriarch of that clan.

Someone on an online forum asked the question "What do you want to do before you die?" Sort of a "Bucket List" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0825232/. I said I wanted to enjoy grandchildren. Even though I feel my articles, books, work will be a sort of legacy, I hope to live to see my children build their own nests, raise their own fledglings.

When that doesn't happen -- when a child dies, the pain is so acute it's hard to imagine that you could "get over it." It's more likely that the best we can do, at least in the short term, is to survive it.

Long live our children, and our children's children.

A free book to download for Moms

My longtime friend Cheryl Moeller is an inspiration in one way in particular: At 50, she is a popular Christian comedian whose delightful observations on parenting come from a very real, very wild place: Cheryl is the mother of six. No, that's not a "blended" family -- although some of Cheryl's days feel like she's in a big blender on smoothie speed. And it's not six dogs either (nice try, animal lovers) -- she has six kids, and she still has her sense of humor.

Of course, she couldn't have done it without her sense of humor, which is in evidence bigtime in her most recent book. Written with Jill Hart, Planet Mom is "a wild and wonderful place where kids swing on ceiling fans, diapers appear four days later in the trunk, and children think bread is made out of deer (think "(dough)…a deer…a female deer.")

Cheryl and Jill have come up with 99 reasons why you should become a permanent resident of Planet Mom (or be thankful if you already are). It's all a nod to the truth that moms are doing the most important job in the world…and the results are out of this world.

Download this book here: http://cwahm.com/wordpress/mothers-day-gift-for-you/

and have a wonderful Mother's Day.

"I love the “Planet Mom” book! Very cute. In fact, I will print it off for moms in my family for Mother’s Day. We all need reminders as to why we are in this profession of motherhood and this is the perfect reminder!"~ Lisa J.

Creativity helps shut-in parents stay interested in life

So you're the adult child of a shut-in elder. In honor of those days when you were little and dependent, when they amused you when you were ill and looked for things for you to do on rainy days, it's time to get a bit creative, perhaps.

If your elder parent is at all interested in handwork or art, look for safe ways they can nurture that tendency.

For example, art supplies are good for all ages. My mother was an artist in her day; she formed an artist community that is now 100-artists strong, and which recognizes her labor of love on their website.

And while her hands are very unsteady these days she has put her love of the visual into some really avant garde scrapbooking.

Don't be surprised if the creativity allows your elder friend to express some negative emotions. My sister got her a very fancy leather/parchment handmade scrapbook in Italy, expecting her to fill it with genteel pictures and memories, and was shocked to see what Mum did with it ;) Having an emotional outlet is a good thing, and some elders feel they have to be "up" all the time so people will enjoy being around them. While an inspirational elder is a wonderful thing, so is honest self-expression.

This stuff is like some of the really bizarre stuff you see from top artists -- a lot of cutting and pasting and such going on. I totally get it - she's like an avant garde Grandma Moses.

I came across some booklets of paper samples and gave those to her and she's having a ball with them.

Having a product -- actually producing something -- can be a satisfying thing for someone who has been productive all their life but been sidelined by disability. It can also be something to talk about and show visitors -- so if you can find something interesting about that product, do so. The use of color, the combination of textures -- even the neatness of the pages -- all are fodder for discussion.

Even if you're at a distance, you can get a cheap phone plan and find innovative ways to make airtime fly. When small talk got tiny as I chatted with my father, who was bed-bound, I read to him from favorite writers -- Emerson, Frost, Service, L'Amour, Dobie.

My mother takes an interest in the newsy emails I read to her that have come to me from others.

Even though some elders don't have access or capacity to use computers, they can experience the wonders of the Internet vicariously. I used Google to learn fascinating facts about my father's family, and then I read them aloud to him. He was genuinely fascinated.

Anything your elder asks or wonders about can be fodder for a computer search and shared discovery. As long as we live, our minds need input.

In art and in communication, this is one way to get another generation involved. Young ones can help cut or paste, or find things to bring to Grandma for her scrapbook. Older children and teens can read aloud.

And if you're not in the habit, it's very doable to close the conversation with "Love you, Mom" or "Love you, Grandpa" -- even if your elder's unaccustomed to talking in affectionate terms, at this time in their life, an assurance of love is likely a good thing. Right?

Missteps in the American education system?

Okay, so I got a little ticked off when I heard posters on mediabistro.com berating the American education system.

As the wife of an educator and a sometime education writer for Texas School Business and The Dallas Morning News among others, I'd have to say most American schools and educators are doing a great job of educating a very socioeconomically diverse generation. In the U.S., everyone gets an education. Granted it's better in some places -- your tax dollars at work, higher concentrations of literate parents raising kids in print-rich environments, parents whose incomes enable their kids to go to school on a full belly in the morning and in decent clothes. Those are huge advantages, right there.

Someone protested on the same board about school efforts to teach morals. I say they're a sign of the times, perhaps, and maybe a response to some of the terrible news about bullies and kids without scruples. And if parents are falling down on the job or too busy to do it, the schools do need to step in.

Complaints about renewed emphasis on phys ed? Surely, reviving PE curriculum is a response, and not a kneejerk one, to American homes turning out chunky latchkey kids who sit in front of the TV/computer/video game in lieu of family involvement or good babysitter. And afterschool programs that keep kids active and supervised would be a big step in the right direction.

With all this, a protest that in some schools economics is being phased out or made an elective? While I'd definitely say economics is an essential, I'd also like to see SAT/standardized test prep courses essential for kids who are passing, and tutoring courses essential for those who are not.

For people with as much education as they have, teachers are not lavishly paid, as some retorted. And with an increased emphasis on accountability, administrators are under a lot of pressure and their salaries are modest for their doctoral-level educations, compared the huge amounts lavished upon their counterparts in industry.

That said, there are some real dud educators out there, and if school systems weren't so desperate for educators, those bad apples wouldn't find a place at the chalkboard, living proof that good teachers couldn't possibly be overpaid because they're in short supply.

Education aside, it is certainly the parents' role to teach checkbook management, morals, ethics, reproductive essentials, faith, love of reading, early literacy, and to help their child develop their gifts.

I had someone tell me recently that it wasn't normal for parents to do all those things, that is the school's responsibility.

I don't think so.

Here's the thread on mediabistro I'm ranting about: http://mediabistro.com/bbs/cache/t38970_1.asp

The Very Mean Big Sister, or How I Learned to Read

I still believe it was sheer bossiness that prompted my sister to play school with me. It was the only thing she’d let me play with her.
Laurel wouldn’t let me in the tree house; instead, she sat up in that massive cedar tree with my cousin Debbie, making up an imaginary language they could make fun of me. "Ishnakishnahaky Jackie," would be followed by gales of laughter. To this day, Laurel asserts that it was a genuine language. I'd say the test of a language is its usefulness, and ridicule isn't enough to recommend it.
She wouldn’t let me be in the Dog Club. I watched with longing from a distance. as she and her school friends pointed to the life-size chart of a dog and learned all its parts. She was that mean, I told my dad tearfully.
Laurel always pointed out in return, without much tact whatsoever, that I was a whiny brat. Okay, so I did give her doll Jane a haircut, exposing the secret place Laurel had written the doll's name in case she got lost. Jane, right there in neat printing, on her forehead. Touche. How was I to know it wouldn’t grow back?
But she let me play school – no, she MADE me play school, sitting me down in a chair and relentlessly learning me my alphabets until I could read. "I'm the teacher, you're the pupil," she ordered.
Secretly, the game pleased me, but I couldn't let her know that, or for sure she'd have suspended me from "school." I was displeased when my mother, for some reason, decided not to send me to kindergarten;I drew a large schoolhouse mural on the yellow wall of my bedroom.
The first two books I ever owned I got at about the same time. I’d had hand-me-downs, of course – my siblings’ vintage Winnie The Pooh books among them.
But my first two books, brought home by my mother from an out of town trip, were Easy Reader’s Barney Beagle and The Cat in the Hat Comes Back. I read them over and over and dreamed of going off to school where there would be many, many more books to read.
When I had clearly mastered that material, my mother moved on to more challenging books. There was Robert Louis Stephenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses, and an odd satirical cartoon book she brought back from Expo 67.
By the time I did get to go to school in grade 1, I was eagerly snapping up every book I could find, and the teacher would have me read to the other children.
Books, I was to learn, were not just my best friends; they were my transit papers to other worlds.