Serotonin and SIDS

NPR ran a story on Wednesday about the link between low serotonin levels and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. This is groundbreaking research, but so far, it appears that it will be used to find yet new ways of drugging our babies.

"The team hopes the study will lead to a test that measures a baby's serotonin levels, making it possible to identify children at highest risk for SIDS."

And then what? It's only a short leap to the prescription of serotonin-boosting pharmaceuticals. Prozac anyone?

At no time in the story was it mentioned how serotonin-producing actions on the part of the mother, like skin-to-skin contact or on-demand feeding, might now be further supported by this research to naturally increase serotonin and decrease stress for newborns. I would love to see natural birth and attachment parenting advocates rally together to see that this study gets taken in (what I believe is) the right direction.

What do you think? Is this research finding a boon for natural parenting practices, or will it only further the medical interventions imposed on newborns and their mothers? I'd like to hear what you have to say.

Derailed

Today, I thought I was going to write about how life at home has returned to a happy homeostasis. I was going to share some sweet stories about Lucas and about how smoothly things have been flowing for us over the past couple of weeks.

But before I began writing, I checked in on Twitter and got completely derailed. It's not because it sucked up all my writing time. It's true that social media can take me down rabbit holes in which an hour completely disappears in the space of a minute, but that's not what happened this morning. What happened this morning is what is supposed to happen on Twitter. I discovered (or re-discovered) some amazing people who are writing about important things, and promoting their ideas in brilliant ways. How inspiring, right?

Yes, for the average person, I imagine it is inspiring. For me and my unpredictable self-confidence, I went straight from inspired to intimidated to shut down. I'll give you an example, and you should definitely check out her site, because it's fantastic. It's Project GiftED.com spearheaded by Melissa Greczy, a wunderkind herself with two gifted daughters. Her brief Twitter bio reads, "Passionate about raising remarkable children. Latest breakthroughs in child development and interviews with some of the most enlightened child experts." She's not using the label Indigo or Crystal children, but those are precisely the kids she's talking about. She had one post that actually addressed this mystical angle here, which garnered 35 comments, mostly in support of the concept. With 11,437 parents subscribed to her newsletter alone, she has a huge reach. She's bringing the issues of crystal children into the mainstream by approaching it from the gifted standpoint. She incorporates interviews, videos, social media, and all the things successful internet marketers use to build their brand and their platform, and she does it all beautifully.

If you haven't guessed it yet, I'm feeling rather jealous, and this is my own smallness. Melissa is someone I'd love to talk with and learn from. We have a lot in common, and yet … I don't feel up to the task of even sending her an email. After all, "She has built several million dollar businesses on her own, making her one of the most successful female entrepreneurs in the U.S." I'm intimidated and mad at myself for feeling this way.

Here is the larger issue. I can't even see myself successfully doing what she's doing. If I look at my writing and my goals on a continuum, I just don't see it. I want to see it, but I suppose I just haven't experienced enough success to even have a sense of what that looks like for me. The chasm between where I am now and where I want to be is huge, and I don't see a bridge anywhere in sight.

(I'm going to have to either stop writing soon or head home, because if I'm not careful, I'm going to start crying right here in the coffee shop.)

Why am I sharing this? Is it for attention? Maybe. (I'll be honest, I know myself well enough to know that on some level, it's almost always about getting attention.) More than that, though, it's that this morning it was time for me to write, and this is what needed to be expressed. To express it publicly is to share myself honestly and fully. Perhaps someone else will identify and not feel like they're the only one.

And … maybe it's because I am realizing I need help to do this. I need a plan, a partner, a mentor. I can't do this alone. And I have no budget to hire a marketing team and no tolerance for the internet gurus and their $499 telecourses. I've tried telling myself to approach this one step at a time. Just write. Worry about all the other stuff later. But you know, there are blogs skyrocketing to the top of the heap in a fraction of the time I've been blogging and that's because they're doing a lot more than just writing. I'm getting lost in the dust. Just writing doesn't build readership. And with readership in the double digits, I get discouraged, and my writing begins to feel futile, and everything grinds to a halt.

Help?

Work to Do*

I've started to insist that Lucas take care of a few more things by himself. At three, his motor skills are sufficiently developed to do basic daily tasks like get dressed, make his bed, clear the table, and wipe his butt. I'd been avoiding this delegation of responsibility for a variety of stupid reasons:

1. He was asking me to do these things for him, and I was under the misguided notion that I was building our bond by saying yes unless there was a really compelling reason to say no. (It didn't occur to me until recently that personal responsibility and self-confidence could be compelling reasons.)
   
2. I didn't want to add more opportunities for us to lock horns.
   
3. It took him too long and I was impatient.
   
4. I'm better at them. Might as well do them myself.
   

So what made me change my mind? Was the answer revealed in meditation? Did my journaling suddenly yield an epiphany? I'd love to say so, but no.

I read another book.

I know, I know. I need to learn to trust myself and stop looking to experts who don't know my child, but THIS one (Kids are Worth it!, by Barbara Coloroso) was really helpful and here's why: Reading it tripped a little memory switch in my mind, and suddenly I was back in my classroom teaching my second and third graders at Willamette Primary in the '90s. I could see myself empowering them to take responsibility for themselves in everything from homework to personal conflicts. I could see their class meetings, their brainstorming sessions to come up with solutions to classroom problems, their independence, and their confidence. I could clearly see how giving them the space to muddle through things that were initially difficult, while offering just the right amount of encouragement and guidance, resulted in astounding capacity and self-esteem. By half-way through each year, they were practically running the class themselves.

Through my little flash-back, I could see how I was currently robbing my son of this same experience by doing everything for him. The more I helped, the more he needed. The more I said yes, the more he demanded. Mothering him was becoming exhausting and annoying.

I began to insist that Lucas take care of a few more things by himself, while affirming that I knew he could handle it. At first, I did the tasks with him, narrating each step of the process. For example:

"This is how you can lay out your pajamas. You can sit on them here and then slide your legs into the little footies. That's right. Now slide your arms into the armholes. You've got it. Now stand up and zip it up. You did it!"

I narrated this one twice for him, slowly and step by step, before he had it. Sure, it took a lot longer than pulling them on him myself, but now when I say, "It's time to put on your pjs," he goes in his room to put them on by himself, taking up none of my time. Brilliant, isn't it?

I did the same with putting on socks and shoes, making his bed, wiping his bottom, and cleaning up after himself if he'd made a mess. It feels like I've spent the last two weeks doing nothing more than coaching him through these basic tasks. It's been kind of relaxing, actually. It takes a lot less energy to sit and watch him than it does to be lifting, bending, picking up, cleaning up, harping, and complaining.

My mother was over on one of those days and observed, "You seem awfully patient all of a sudden. What changed?" It reminded me of when I was teaching, and people would compliment me on my perceived patience. I would tell them, "Oh no, I'm not patient at all. That's why it's worth it to me to build this independence now, so I don't have to listen to the whining, tattling, or arguing for the rest of the year. That would drive me crazy."

The same holds true for Lucas. It's not patience. It's hedging my bets! It's peacefully accepting the process, and trusting that we're on the right track. I know we're on the right track because the power struggles have almost completely stopped, he's eager to show off his competence, and we're enjoying our time together much more. He's spending his time engaged in meaningful work that's challenging enough to keep him interested, while not frustrating him. This work has taken the place of activities like begging for snacks all day long, arguing with me, throwing temper tantrums, and bugging the cats.

The possibilities for meaningful work are endless! If he happens to splash water on the floor of the bathroom while washing his hands, I say, "There's the towel," and he gets to work wiping it up. If he drops a few crumbs on the floor during snack, I hand him the mini dustpan and broom and he happily practices his sweeping. If he has an accident in his underwear, I say, "Hmm… It looks like you have a problem. What's your plan to solve it?" He says, "I'm going to go change my underwear and put these in the laundry." And then I say, "Sounds good. I know you can handle it." Off he goes.

I love it! I get help and he gains skills and confidence! I think the power struggles have dwindled because he's finding appropriate ways of exercising his power and competence. It seems like such a no-brainer now, but I just couldn't see it before.

Next, I'm going to teach him to cook. That'll save me some time!



*Interesting that this song by the Isley Brothers is one of Lucas' current faves.

A Surprising Discovery

I've made a surprising discovery. Over the last four months, I've read six parenting books, adjusted my parenting strategies six times, fought with my three-year-old, on average, six times a day, and gained at least six pounds from stress eating. I thought I was a great mom, but when Lucas turned three and started preschool, I had many reasons to question this assumption.

One book said his behavior was by-the-book normal for a slightly older three-year-old, and that my best bet would be to farm him out to others as much as I could so I didn't go crazy. I liked that idea, (of course I did!) so I started leaving him in after-care for three extra hours at preschool twice a week. The next book said I would cause my son to fall prey to peer pressure later on if he spent too much time with other kids and not enough with us. It also said that I was creating an attachment gap that peers would fill if I didn't help him when he was clearly capable of handling a task by himself. Here I was expecting him to put on his own shoes, with no idea that I was setting him up for full-body tattoos and drug addiction. I limited my use of after-care, and decided to help him whenever he asked for help, which shortly became all the time. I was exhausted.

Another book made me feel terribly guilty that I didn't hold him 24 hours a day when he was a baby. Apparently, this lack of full body contact caused him to miss out on time-sensitive neural connections, and this is clearly the reason he is now not cooperating with me. I decided to make it up to him by "spending time" at bedtime, which meant staying next to him until he fell asleep, and letting him come into bed with us when he asked. I was losing sleep and a bit more of my mind every night.

I tried time-outs and time-ins. I tried saying yes to most everything and keeping our schedule open and loose, and I tried limiting choices and instituting routines. Nothing seemed to improve our dynamic.

Let me just say that I do realize I've broken the cardinal rule of effective parenting: be consistent. Consistency is a problem when one is consumed with self-doubt and quick to implement new ideas. It would be silly of me to stick with the first thing I tried if it wasn't working, wouldn't it? Questioning and experimentation has its place in any thinking person's life, and although my son may have suffered from my lack of consistency, I think whatever I learn from these trials – and there will be many more – benefits us all in the long run.

Something shifted last week – and yes, it was due to another parenting book. But this book reminded me of something deep within myself. It gave me a larger perspective on all that I'd been reading and brought me back to what was true for me. I let go of the guilt, I let go of the strategies, I let go of the fear … and I returned to parenting in the way my intuition had been trying to pull me all along. The entire exercise was a lesson in trust.

It was also a lesson in humility, which leads me back to my surprising discovery. Did you think I'd forgotten? In the midst of all this self-doubt, I found it very difficult to work on my book. The pressure of writing a book that claimed to offer advice to parents while feeling stymied by my own son had pretty much stopped me in my tracks. I began to worry that I'd have to scrap the entire project. A little thought kept floating through my head that said, "memoir … memoir." I ignored it until a dear friend said it aloud. "What if you wrote it as a memoir?" Suddenly, everything made sense. Yes, this book would flow much more easily as a memoir than as a parenting book. It would also take me out of that strange position of pretending to be some kind of an expert when I'm clearly not.  This way, I could keep writing books even if Lucas turns out to be a menace to society, and no one can come after me to discredit me or tell me I gave bad advice.  It's still my story, right?

As soon as I settled on this decision, my relationship with Lucas magically reached equilibrium once again. In some ways, I think this whole thing was simply the humbling catalyst for moving my book in the right direction. Thanks, Lucas. Once again, you have amazed me.

And Yet Another Psychic Moment

I don't know if these are of interest to you, but rather than let them pass and forget about them, I'll keep sharing with you these odd, double-take moments.

This morning, I told Lucas that our friend, Janine, and her little girl, Jules, were going to come over for a visit. He was very excited to see them, but then got seemingly mixed up and started talking about Azul coming over. Azul is another friend who is almost never without her baby, Suraya … but Lucas said Suraya wasn't coming. He just kept insisting that Azul was coming over, along with Janine and Jules. I reminded him that it was just Janine and Jules who were coming over later.

I forgot all about this exchange until this afternoon, when I was sitting on the couch with Lucas and Azul, who had popped by for a spontaneous visit that she hadn't even planned to make until she was about to leave her house. She was solo, just as Lucas had mentioned this morning.

Things that make you go, "Hmmm…"

Another Psychic Moment

We were looking forward to spending New Year's Eve with our friends down the street. Lucas was especially excited about playing with Grace, their kindergartener. He's always had a thing for older girls. That afternoon, he kept up a running monologue about Grace, which sometimes slipped into a dialogue with her, (in absentia, of course). It went something like this:

"Grace is on vacation. She is going on a plane to Alaska, and we will get to her house tonight, but she will be in Alaska. I won't get to see her, because she will be in Alaska. Grace, are you in Alaska? … (waiting for answer) Yes? You are? You moved to Alaska? Mommy, Grace moved to Alaska." And on and on, over and over again.

I don't know where he got the Alaska thing. At the time, I thought perhaps it was all the Santa talk about the North Pole.

When we got to our neighbors' house, I happened to share the story with Grace's mom, thinking it was cute that Lucas was carrying on imaginary conversations with Grace about something as random as moving to Alaska. Then she shared with me that she and her husband had just been have some serious conversations about relocating to Alaska. I guess it wasn't so random, after all.

Just when I start to think Lucas is losing his intuitive gifts, he'll come out with something like this, just as a reminder not to get too complacent.