Julie Pippert: Using My Words

This past weekend my younger daughter waited in a waiting room for "forever" (approximately 45 minutes), then stood in a line in a hall for "even longer" (approximately 20 minutes), and finally heard her number called (not her name). It was her turn. She walked into a room and stood in front of four adults and sang her heart out. All by herself. She had the boldness and courage to walk into a room and audition for a show. She put herself out there to go for something she really wanted. She had the wisdom to know what she wanted. She'd had about two days(ish) to prepare. We learned about the opportunity to do this on Thursday. We spent a little time that evening selecting a song. Then, she applied herself for two straight hours learning the melody and lyrics. The next day was a school day but still, under her own motivation, she worked that evening memorizing and getting comfortable. The next morning, thanks to some generous and talented family, we went to her a...

The clerk told me the total and I flinched. Literally. We'd just finished gathering all the school supplies specified on the list for my oldest daughter, now in an upper grade of elementary. The expectations are much higher. And so is the cost. It's also a lot harder. Her questions are more complex, and her moods more mercurial. Once upon a time I could have gone to the store and bought the supplies for her. Now, however, she has a vested interest in this and all purchases, as well as many aspects of life…because in her mind, they all reflect on her. She sees herself in a new way. She's becoming self-conscious about the music she listens to, the clothes she wears, how she fixes her hair and accessorizes, the way she talks…everything. When did all this happen and what do I do? I swear five minutes ago she was just starting to talk! So, after shopping, I came to Facebook and stated that back to school shopping was a physical pain and added a few melodramatic OUCH c...

Last night I told my daughters, "You should be ashamed of yourselves." I know modern parenting has it that we should never let our kids feel badly, especially about themselves, but the truth was...by our family's morals and ethics my kids should have felt badly about what they did and about themselves. We had just returned home from a short four-day holiday visiting my mother. A couple of those days I was at the South by Southwest Conference, and to cover my absence -- which nobody seemed to notice much, a good thing -- the family went on the Fun Run: lake, picnic, boating, kite flying, park, and more. It was days of outdoors and good times, which the kids loved. After an easy and speedy drive, we arrived home shortly before dinner, and that's when the kids launched into bickering and insults that escalated into vicious behavior. My husband and I both tried several times to redirect, direct, intervene, and every other parenting measure in our arsenal, to no avail. I t...

It's a jungle out there, which requires skilled juggling and a bag of tricks, too. When Grease! (the movie) came out, my friends and I went Grease-crazy. Everyone bought the album, and we poured over the foldout album cover's yearbook style collection of photos. We tried to decide which T-Birds were cute versus too greaser, and which photo of Danny and Sandy was best. Meanwhile, the vinyl record played on the record player in the background, repeating the songs until they were burned into my brain for thirty years (and probably beyond). For my birthday, I had a fifties themed party that year. All the kids came in rolled up jeans and tee-shirt or puffy poodle skirts. I have the photos still, and there we are dancing, singing, and mugging in a big group for the camera. It's amazing how period-perfect we looked. It's amazing how carefree and happy we were. When I look at the photos, I remember other things beyond the giant amount of fun we had at my party, beyond how thri...

She is three, no four now, and she is running along a stretch of grassy lawn. Her feet flash over the mix of brown and green blades of grass and the skirt she wears---skirts and dresses only---peals behind her, bell-shaped. Her short hair, self-cut, flops beneath three bows placed strategically yet erratically on her head. She faces forward, never looking away to either side or behind herself. Her arms and legs pump fast and hard as she races to meet up with friends to play, big kids, who are waiting for her in the cul-de-sac. Except she never thinks they will wait for her and so she, the younger child, spends her life running to keep up. I shuffle more slowly behind her, trying to gauge the right distance to stay back---enough forward to assuage my desire to protect and enough back to respect her desire for freedom and independence. She has no idea I am there, but I watch her closely, not just for safety but for the remembrance of pure emotion I know she feels. She is unguarded, yet. ...

In the morning when they crawl into bed with you, half asleep still, warm and scented so poignantly of themselves, when they stretch their ever longer bodies alongside you, give a wiggle to snuggle in, when you wrap your arm around them and by habit they lift their heads a little, when you bury your nose in their hair and your mouth reflexively kisses the crown of their heads, when the sky outside is shifting from navy to a dense gray, the time before the pinkening...you feel a contentment so deep and perfect it feels like a quiet joy. It feels like a joy so marvelous it is near silent, with no need to trumpet itself. Your hope rises with the dawn, glowing with the yellowing sun. You think it's good, this is good, and it's okay, it will all be okay. That's important because you---those of you who mother---know that every day somewhere in at least one corner of your heart is the fear that your child will be hurt (or worse) in this life, and you can't get rid of it becaus...

Yesterday we ran out of bread. That surprised me because we don't tend to eat that much bread in my family, and we spread what bread eating we do across a plethora of products (Kashi waffles, bagels, English muffins, etc.). However, apparently this past week saw a big run on the bread and we ran out, on a week I don't have a shopping trip planned.* Of course I didn't even have stale crusts left over from the previous weeks because of the Ginormous Seagull Feeding Disaster.** That's fine, though, because you can't keep a good woman down. I rooted in the pantry and found a box of bread mix. Excellent, I thought, I'll just whip up some homemade bread. The kids can help and we'll have an Activity! Some Fun! The house will smell delicious and we'll have bread for the week! I got the kids set up at their table with "helping" tasks (mixing flour and water) and set to it. Yeast and warm water, check, waiting, mixing bread ingredients, check. Waiting. M...

Image from SurvivalIQ Handbook : Edible and medicinal plants---raspberry, blackberry and dewberry The bush along the bike path to school first sprouted bright red berries about a month ago, right when the rolie polies came out in force. My children, naturalists of course, spotted them immediately. They also immediately wanted to put them in their mouths. "Raspberries!" they shouted, grabbing at the bush. "Wait!" I said, uselessly. "Ouch!" they said, stabbed by thorns. "YUCK!" they said, spitting out the partially chewed berries, and as much taste as they could. "Sigh," I said, as usual wondering when they'd ever learn to listen to me and why the entire myth of natural consequences began. "Step back from the bush," I said, "Close your mouths and open your ears." They hesitated, and looked back at the bush. "Before you grab at any plant or bush, you need to know what it is. Some plants can make you sick or giv...

If you ask Persistence how old she is, she'll tell you she's five. She can't quite bring herself to say six, her sister's age. Is it because her sister holds a claim to that number right now, or is it an inherent talent for hyperbole---knowing exactly where the line is that she shouldn't cross? On Saturday at a party several of us were laughing with a neighbor, my friend's husband, and he was spinning yarns about his upcoming trip to Italy. "You need to learn how to lie, Jack," I said, "You go one step past believable. If you'd said you were biking from Paris to Florence, some of us might have partially believed you. But walking?" And we all laughed harder. "Maybe it's intentional," he told me, "I get in trouble for teasing, so I try to make sure I'm way over the top upfront so nobody even starts to believe me." Someone reminded me that I must be a very good liar because everyone thinks I'm truthful. I am ...

By Friday of last week, I was a wee bit stressed . In case the spinning head and shrill tone escaped anyone's notice. Luckily, Friday is followed up by that miracle of time known as The Weekend. Our weekend was healing. Other than a Sunday we dedicated to fun, I think the thing that stands out most are three women who contributed something along the lines of restoring my faith in humanity. Random Acts of Kindness Act I The woman was behind the Starbucks counter at Target. She was probably ten years older than me, at most. I'd been dragged into the Starbucks by a wailing Persistence, and I was exhausted straight through my spirit by incessant creative parenting, power struggles, and daughters on the edge. "That milk!" Persistence shriek-wailed, "THAT MILK! Nilla MILK!" Our circuit through the deli-produce-bakery area had been going badly. Persistence is always hungry and thirsty, and a carton of milk will keep her happy through the store. The cooler by the fr...

She herself was not strong-willed...so she quickly recognized the futility of attempting to alter the course of unalterable events. Enduring what couldn't be cured, she supposed, was what people meant by being adult, though it was ironic that so few of them---including her parents---had mastered the skill themselves. By age twelve she'd already learned to cut her losses and derive what comfort she could from doing so. Generally she was happy or, failing that, reasonably content, though she sometimes wondered if she'd conceded the inevitable too quickly. What if the only thing concessions got you was the habit of conceding? "All and Sundry," from Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo (p.324) (if you aren't reading this book, you should) Marie A. Sherrett, past president of the Prince George's County, MD, chapter of the Autism Society of America, in her article, " Assertiveness and Effective Parent Advocacy, " wrote that parents of special needs kids c...

Persistence is in a hardcore princess phase. Jon and I are baffled by it. Where did it come from? Prior to her obsession (and believe me, it's an obsession) we had a very limited amount of princess stuff. Neither girl had ever expressed much interest in princesses, and we had no desire to push princess stuff, so...we lacked stock. We had maybe a few books, although not ones she read much. We don't watch any princess TV shows or own any princess movies. There were a few dress-up princess dresses Patience had gotten as gifts in years past, and maybe a doll. I think school might be the genesis. At Halloween she wore a Georgie costume and every other little girl wore a princess costume. The following week, she was princess crazed. She wore one, or two, of her princess costumes every single day. I freshened the dresses as best I could, and changed out the base clothing underneath. I refused to let her go out of the house in the ridiculous clunky plastic shoes and we came to an agree...