A year ago, our family was planning a move to Rochester. My husband moved here in early October of last year to begin a new job, and I tried my hand at “single parenting” for a few months to finish out the school semester and wait for our house to sell. Whether consciously or unconsciously, I also made a decision to try out a new parenting style.
I said “yes.” To everything. All the time.
Ok, that might be a bit of an exaggeration. No one has ever referred to me as a low-anxiety person, much less a low-anxiety parent. Thus, our lives still maintained a fair amount of…shall we say…structure. Because “structured” sounds better than “control freak”. I’m not talking about overly permissive parenting and eliminating boundaries, I’m talking about saying “yes” when I can say “yes”. Even if it is inconvenient and even if I’m really not in the mood.
I knew that our time left in Oklahoma was short, and I knew there was a plethora of people, places, and things that we would miss deeply. So I said yes. And I slowly realized that saying yes was not going to mean spending too much money (most of the time). I realized my kids weren’t asking for crazy outlandish things. I figured out that mamas hear so many requests/demands/needs/call them what you will-every day-that I hadn’t even noticed how reasonable my children’s requests actually were. They weren’t asking for expensive items at the store or repeated trips to the local amusement parks-even after they noticed that I was agreeing to most things! My children were asking for play dates. They were asking to go to the park, the farmers market, or the street fair. And occasionally, they were asking to go to their favorite restaurants. We did that, too. But mostly, I just said yes to enjoying life.
Before this “new me,” my conversations with my children went something like this:
Daughter: “Can so-and-so sleep over on Friday?”
Me, in my head: “Bless her heart, I will lose my ever-loving mind if I have to spend 18 hours with that child.”
Me, out loud: “Umm…how about we talk to her mom and plan something for later on in the month?” (mercilessly hoping that she would lose this desire entirely, never to be mentioned again.)
Or something like this:
Son: “Mama, can we go to the zoo?” (We had a zoo membership).
Me, in my head: “It’s 90 degrees in October, and the sub-Saharan animals don’t even want to be outside at the zoo today. So no. Try me in December.”
Me, out loud: “Let’s wait for a cooler day.”
Then I started saying yes.
I sweated through the zoo on hot days. We got fruit from the Farmer’s Market on Saturday mornings. Friends came to play, as often as requested. My daughter even had friends sleep over, as often as she wanted, and whomever she wanted. I knew she was going to miss these girls. We checked out parks and street fairs and homecoming parades. And we ate all of our favorite foods, at least on a weekly basis. Let’s just say that the Chick-fil-A in Bloomington is NOT close enough for my kids. Who am I kidding? I would give my own right arm for those waffle fries on any given day. Except Sunday. They’re closed.
And you know what? Those months—those long, hard months of being separated from my husband, of constantly trying to keep a house “show-able,” and of being really quite pregnant were some of the most fun months that I have ever had with my oldest two children. Ultimately, saying “yes” was not only fun for them, it was fun for me.
It turns out, my children are actually pretty cool little people. And I enjoy spending time with them. I even enjoy spending time with their friends. My children are not unreasonable or demanding; they’re just better at finding good in life than I am.
Then we moved to Rochester. And even if you are moving for the right reasons, and even if you are moving closer to family and friends, moving is hard.
We moved, added another child to our family, and slowly but surely, I have lost my “yes parenting” and have returned to being a “no” mom. Nope, you can’t have so-and-so over. Negative, we are not going to make it to the Children’s Museum today. NO I absolutely CAN.NOT. read you another Berenstain Bear book. Those things are like novels for preschoolers. They take FOREVER to read. Give me some Little Blue Truck or Llama Llama any day. I can breeze right through. Would you believe that we didn’t visit the Farmer’s Market in Rochester one time all summer? I happen to know that it’s amazing, and we never even got there.
The net result has been that I have not been truly enjoying my kids, for several months now. I can guarantee you that they haven’t been enjoying me, either. I can blame it on stress, or lack of sleep, or feeling “out of my element”, but the reality is that they need me now. It is arguably fairly easy to “make the most” of your days when you know those days are coming to an end. It is harder to do as a way of life. But that’s truly what I want to model for my children-making the most out of each day that we have together. There is fun to be had now. And they are so good at finding it. From now on, I’m going to try to remember to say yes. We are all happier for it.
