Charity Reset by Vomit

I got an unexpected “blessing in disguise” this week: My two preschoolers had a stomach bug. And Justin went out of town for work before it was over. Stay with me. I know it sounds awful. And….it was….but….it was also a good Reset for me.

Lately, I have found myself being a “hurry up and do what I said” mom more often than I’d like to admit. I said to do X, so do it right now. Don’t finish your picture first. Don’t get a book to bring with you. Just do it. 1….2….3….4….

*sigh*

That’s not really the kind of mom I want to be. Impatient, yelling, expecting perfection from little people who have only been on the earth for less than five years. Anything they can do, I expect them to. Quickly.

Luke went through a phase of being very independent. He wanted to do everything himself, even though it took him four times longer to do it by himself than it would have taken for me to help him or do it for him. Then, he went through a phase of being super needy. Things I knew he could do–things he’d insisted on learning to do for himself a couple months earlier–he now whined that I help him with. With every step of the process. Now, he’s in a phase (maybe a phase??) of wanting things just exactly how he wants them. Sometimes that’s him doing it himself. Sometimes it’s me helping. Usually it’s the opposite of what I assumed or hoped for at the beginning of the task.

At home, when we’re not going anywhere, and there are no time constraints, I want him to go potty by himself. I know he is physically capable of everything except getting the toilet paper (because I purposely keep it out of his reach, because it’s just way too tempting for him), so I want him to do it. I am holding the baby. I am nursing the baby. I am doing chores. Whatever it is, I would like him to do it by himself. But when we’re at home, he wants me to help him. Carry me to the potty. Help me get my pants off. Stand beside me while I go. Help me put my pants back on. Help my wash my hands. This often turns me into “hurry up and do what I said” mom.

At church, especially if he decided he needed to go potty in the middle of the service, he suddenly wants to be independent again. I remind him that if he locks the door, I won’t be able to come in and help him. I know, Mommy. He goes into the stall, locks the door, gets his pants off, then realizes he can’t get up onto the potty by himself (since he chose the accessible stall, with the extra-tall toilet), comes back and unlocks the door, I help him up. I need privacy. I go back outside the stall and wait. After washing hands, he insists on getting his own paper towel, even though his tiny wet fingers rip the paper the first three times. Meanwhile, I’m upset that I’m missing out on the mass, so I’m a little huffy, probably a little snappy, definitely a little “hurry up and do what I said.”

No “thanks for telling me you needed to go potty and not peeing in your pants.” No “good job washing and drying your hands all by yourself.” These are life skills that are truly accomplishments for a three-year-old. And here I am scowling at him and dragging him along back to our pew faster than his legs can walk comfortably.

I have a friend who is magnificent about giving children praise when they deserve it. When we’re together, she gives my kids more compliments than I do. She notices opportunities to give compliments that I completely overlook. I tend toward the camp of, “If it’s always expected or I specifically asked you to do it, you don’t need praise for completing it.” But kids need positive feedback! Way more than they need negative, I imagine. So, after hanging out with said friend, I try to notice the times when I can at least say “Thank you” to my kids for doing good things, even if those things were expected.

Anyway, I’ve been stuck in a “hurry up and do what I said” mom rut. Annoyed with myself, because I know that’s not the kind of mom I want to be, but feeling powerless to change myself. My frustration with their inefficiency. My anger at their occasional deliberate disobedience. My hypocrisy….snapping at them because I’m upset, right after telling them their screaming jumping tantrums are not an appropriate way to express their feelings. Really, Elizabeth?

Then I read a book: Searching for and Maintaining Peace. A man of God suggests, in this book, that allowing my peace to be disturbed is one of the worst possible things for my spiritual life. I’m focused on what doesn’t matter in the grand scheme. Making children be efficient? That’s impossible, let’s be honest, and trying to make it happen is for sure going to steal my peace.

Peace is quiet confidence in God. Peace is knowing Jesus loves me, even when other people act like they don’t. Even when I fail. Especially when I fail, actually. If I continually lose my peace over my children’s inefficiency, and then again over my own uncharitable (and unreasonable) response to their inefficiency–if I’m fretting so much about how I’m not the kind of mom I want to be, but I don’t know how to change–I’m not loving or hoping or faithing very well at all. God gave me these children. God is giving me the graces I need to bear with them, too, and even to love them as He loves them. As He loves me.

The weekend was a full one. We went to a thing at church Saturday morning, dinner at a friend’s house Saturday evening, church Sunday morning, a potluck Sunday evening. All day Sunday, Luke was whiney. He hardly ever naps these days, but I laid down with him in his bed until he fell asleep, because he needed one that day. He was uncharacteristically moody, even for being tired, for him. I asked Justin if he thought Luke might be getting sick, but there were no official symptoms.

We fed the kids before the potluck, because they’re used to eating at our regular weirdly early dinner time. At the potluck, we expected the kids to go run around and play with their friends. Miryam did. Luke whined and hung on Justin and me. He said his tummy hurt. I insisted he go potty. He said his tummy still hurt, and lay on Justin while we both socialized with our friends.

Then Luke threw up on Justin.

So we cleaned up, loaded up, and went home.

I’ll spare you the details, but basically, we were up periodically with Luke that night, and Miryam started in the morning, too. And Justin was scheduled to go out of town for work that afternoon. This sounds like a recipe for disaster, for me. Solo parenting on less sleep than normal, with more laundry than normal, and kids more needy than normal. No “break” from them by sending them to preschool on Tuesday–I wouldn’t chance getting their schoolmates sick, not to mention they both slept in so late it would have been absolutely impossible to get them ready in time.

But somehow, those two days were relatively peaceful.

I have so much more patience for my kids when they’re sick. And maybe part of it was kind of being in “survival mode.” And, granted, Justin was at home with us to help during the worst of it, during the time the actual bodily fluid projections were happening, and to clean up a kid while I cleaned up the clothes/bed/floor. And we never had to be anywhere at all, let alone by a certain time. But here is what happened:

We snuggled a lot. We watched movies. They felt puny. I did what needed to be done. I didn’t demand anything of them. I didn’t yell at them. I set aside my wants and “me” stuff (baking, texting people, blog writing too) and focused on their needs. I prioritized their needs every single time. I prioritized their non-need requests, too, over my extra little “to-do’s” that I like to get done. Only two of them were sick (thankfully!), but the third is a baby and she has her own high maintenanceness just by being. But I didn’t find myself resenting their extra needs and demands. I didn’t feel depleted by caring for them.

In spite of the extra laundry, the extra nighttime wake ups (heaven knows I never get to sleep through the night as it is), even in spite of the lack of backup from Justin once he left out of town….it was weirdly nice. My kids and I were at peace. They needed me, and I was there for them. My goal was to keep them as comfortable as possible: physically and emotionally. For two days straight. And I felt like a good mom, all day, for the first time in a little while.

Reading the book helped. My mind kept going back to, “Don’t let this disturb your peace.” This is my job. God will give me everything I need to get through this with them, if I get out of my own way, out of my “hurry up and get this done” mindset, and let Him. I need to show them how God cares for us, by caring for them. So they can have confidence in Him. So they can feel at peace, too.

It’s the third day, now. Miryam went back to preschool. On time, I might add, which is a feat even when everyone has been healthy. Cecily, Luke, and I went back to our routine, too. I got around to checking the grocery ads, and we made it to the store, and to get gas. Luke wanted to walk at the store. I insisted that he ride in the cart. But I reasoned with him. I didn’t “make” him. I didn’t yell about it. And he let me put him in the seat. All potty trips were yelling-free, today, too. There was definitely some frustration on my part, when he changed his mind multiple times about which potty he wanted to use, and went back and forth about wanting to do parts of it by himself or have me help him with things. I let out some exasperated sighs, and held my tongue. Remember, I’m helping him learn a life skill. I’m helping him grow into a fully functioning individual. Even though Cecily is crying in her crib, wondering if I’ll ever get her up from her nap, Luke needs me right now. I will not lose my peace over him taking ten minutes to go potty. He is going potty in the potty, after all.

And the rest of the day, it was pretty much like that. We were back to our normal things, our normal struggles, our normal time constraints, but I wasn’t falling back into my “hurry up and do what I said” mom patterns. I was consciously choosing to be charitable, rather than authoritarian. I mean, if I said something (“we’ll stay at the playground only ten minutes,” “get into your car seat,” “you have to ride in the cart”), I stood by it, but I wasn’t sarcastic or snappish about it. I was….patient about it. Calm. Peaceful about it. I tried to say Yes whenever possible. We ended up making a huge mess of the kitchen table making slime together because of my trying to say Yes more. But hey, the baby was asleep, and the preschoolers got to make their “goo.” And I didn’t lose it over the goo getting on their clothes. Go wash your hands and put on a clean shirt. This is life.

The stomach bug was like a Reset button on my charity toward my children. It reminded me what it felt like to serve them out of love for them, instead of compelling them to play their part in my life without inconveniencing me, “or else.” It gave me a good opportunity to practice what I’d been internalizing from the peace book. It gave me a chance to be the kind of mom I want to be to them again. It sounds silly. I don’t think I was a bad mom in my previous habits, but I couldn’t say I was quite the mom I wanted to be, either.

Another thing is, Miryam was beautifully patient and understanding herself during her own illness. I found myself repeatedly reminding the kids that “there are three kids and one mommy.” Miryam didn’t want her germs to get to Cecily, so she waited patiently to be snuggled while I tried to put the baby down for a nap, then while I gave Luke a bath and put him to bed (his nap had only been 3 hours compared to hers of 5), then while I finally actually got Cecily to sleep. She was surprisingly her sweetest self while feeling terrible. That must have been divinely orchestrated—Jesus gave her some special graces to help us both get through everything. She is the more rational of my children to begin with, but it was refreshing and reinforcing to my own charity to see her acting so mature about being taken care of along with her brother and sister. And I made sure to tell her how much I appreciated her attitude. What a sweetheart. I love that she’s mine. Her tantrum about her pants getting wet on the slide at the playground today was mitigated by her super-patience during the sick days (and my practice at patience during the same). Amazing.

Who knew that caring for and cleaning up after puking kids would be the reset I needed to get back to being the kind of mom I do want to be? Now that they’re well again, the old habits will try to creep back in. But I have three days of peace under my belt to look back on and go back to. I can do this. These are my kids and they deserve the best of my charity. Let’s keep this up, shall we?