How Can I Help You to Say Goodbye

She said, “My heart is broken right now and it hurts so very much. I have never cried like this before, not even when I hurt my arm.”

It is true. When a kid came flying down from the top of a bounce house and landed on her arm, she cried hard. She cried even harder when I told her that I had never seen her cry like that and I was worried a bone might be broken and we might have to go to the hospital for an x-ray.

Last night, she cried even harder than that. She overheard my dad telling me Friday that someone in her dad’s family was sick in the hospital. They prayed for the baby. Last night she overheard me asking her dad what happened.

Her newest baby cousin had been taken off life support this weekend. Losing a baby is sad enough but how the child ended up on life support is even worse. She doesn’t know the second part. It may take some time but we may have to eventually talk about that, too. I hate that it is her family that makes it necessary to explain things kids shouldn’t have to learn at her age.

After I put her to bed, I heard her talking out loud. It seemed like she was praying. I stood outside her door and listened long enough to hear her say “why . . . take that baby.” So I went in and asked her if she heard me talking to daddy. She said she hadn’t but she was trying to figure it out.

A little over a year ago she was at the hospital when the family gathered around her other uncle’s bed and waited for his body to give out. Her tender heart remembers the sadness. When she asked at that time, I told her his body was very tired and sick and it just couldn’t work anymore.

This time though, there wasn’t an easy explanation. I told her that babies are very delicate. I told her I was delicate once, she was delicate once. I told her sometimes they just don’t make it very far into life. I told her her cousin wasn’t able to breathe on his own. They gave him some medicine and some machines that helped him breathe. When they do that, you can only have the machines do the work for so long and then they are either able to breathe on their own or they aren’t. With the baby being so delicate, he just wasn’t able to.

For the next hour, I held her as she asked a lot of questions about God and Jesus and how we breathe if we are made out of clay. And how do we have skin and bones? How she can know the baby is with God if she’s never seen God before. Someone at daycare told her God is dead. She wanted to know how God could hold a baby if he is dead. Or if he isn’t dead, if he is so old. She didn’t want anyone to die, especially not her family. Why does God take babies?

In between her sobs I explained the best any of us know how.

She wanted to know who was going to take care of her if anything happened to me. She didn’t want to ever leave this house. And her good friend Lily is leaving and she doesn’t want to go. And it isn’t fair that she has to go when she doesn’t want to.

At times an old Paty Loveless song ran through my head as I told her it is ok to feel sad. Remember Inside Out? How she also had to feel sadness. Sadness isn’t a bad thing. I know it hurts. I feel it, too. More than she knows. Then she started to walk through the part where she “didn’t even get to meet him or know him and maybe if she was there . . .”

Half of my answer was me trying to convince her, the other half me trying to convince myself that even if we were there, there was nothing we could have done to stop it.

My heart ached again because I want to rescue the ones who have been abandoned by his family. But all I can do is thank God that he brought us here before that world consumed us. That sentiment in my mind was followed by her lament that every day is always so happy but this Sunday just didn’t end happy at all. Then she fell into a tear exhausted sleep.

As I folded her clothes that aren’t so tiny anymore, I keep thinking about the conversation on the phone drifting to “reduced sentence” for attending anger management. I keep thinking about how oblivious  people can be about what the death of a child means for families in court. I keep praying for the soul of the “really good lawyer” who will be defending the offender. Because I, for one, would not be able to look myself in the mirror because of the things I would have to say to win that case.

Then my mind rests on Kelsey Briggs. The night my reporter and I were sent to Meeker, Oklahoma to try to find the home of a family who just lost their two year old. You will have to look that one up because I can’t re-write here the scene playing on a loop in my head.

I sent a message to her teacher explaining briefly what happened and that she might need a little extra understanding today. This morning I was sure to be tender about rushing her. I was sure to hug her that much tighter when I dropped her off. And now I have the day to try to busy my time so I don’t start formulating plans to bring them all to my home and raise them. My heart is broken right now and it hurts so very much.

Primary Cultural Education

I realized yesterday that the scripts for victim blaming are written for us early in life.

Yesterday, I picked up my daughter and she was nearly in tears afraid she would be in trouble for losing her scooter.

The daycare is remodeling, I assume in response to the growing population of children in care there. Most organizations know that change on a grand scale requires grand degrees of communication. This has apparently escaped the owner of the daycare.

To get an idea of the breakdown, we shall start at the beginning of summer. I let the daycare know that I would be on a work trip for two weeks and that Xyla would be out of care for those two weeks. I didn’t want to use my “vacation” week so I understood they would still be charging me. I came back to find three things. Last year, they let the before and after school kids know that they would be able to participate in the field trips offered by the daycare. The office staff (Tricia is my favorite person in the whole world – I would clone her if I could) stopped each parent and let them know she would need them to sign the permission slip and everything else would be taken care of. It was my understanding that the kids in Xyla’s age group were automatically enrolled since the day care pays their fee for this.

No one mentioned it so she wasn’t enrolled, therefore had to watch all of her friends go on field trips for two weeks while she stayed at the daycare all day. She wasn’t auto enrolled because apparently when I told them she would be out of care for two weeks because I was going on a work trip, they assumed I was taking her out of care altogether. When I dropped her off two weeks later, they had rearranged all of the cubbies and made new name tags for everyone but her. Then a few weeks later they had her listed as needing transport to a different school than the one she attended.

I asked Tricia about the field trips and she promised that she would let me know as soon as an opening came up. And she did. I requested they give her space for her things and a name tag. That took  more than two weeks. Telling them she didn’t go to the other school took longer to get through. I had told more than one person that she was not going to the other school. They made a note and said they would pass the information on. Then the next event like school drop off practice, they still had her on the list for the wrong school. Then there is a note to stop at the desk and make sure your kid is on the right list for the right school if they need transportation. So I tell the staffer there (not Tricia) the information requested and she looked at me like I had just spoken Russian.

The week before school (which is a horrible time to change anything at a daycare) they decide they need to move things around again. Kids who were going on the field trips would bring their scooters one day a week and the scooters were stacked in the hall (fire hazard). With the remodel the space they usually occupied was filled up with more cubbies. Without telling the parents, they moved all of the scooters into the furnace room (?). The owner swears she told the kids they were in there but apparently not all of the kids got the message because Xyla swears she didn’t know and couldn’t find hers. (Thus the panic over thinking she might be in trouble because someone else stole her stuff.)

On the day they take scooters, some parents also give their kids money to buy snacks at the center they go to. I gave Xyla some money which she keeps in her purse, in her cubby under other stuff. I want to pause and say, the first year we were there, someone stole her coat . . . on a winter day . . . and the staff looked at me like “well what do you want me to do about it?” So their reaction to this news was less than surprising.

Did I mention there are surveillance cameras all over this joint? Realistically they could review the tape for the hallway and find out who took it but that is too much trouble or might reveal that they don’t actually record with those cameras.

So when Xyla told me her scooter was missing I was upset. When she told me someone had also taken her money out of her purse I was livid. This is the third time this summer.

The owner was in the lobby handing out popsicles to the kids on their way out the door. So I approached her and said, “I have a problem.” And let her know why I was frustrated. She flat out looked at Xyla and said, “Well then maybe you shouldn’t bring your money to school and just go there on the weekends and your mom can buy you stuff there on the weekends.” Then looked at me and said, “you know her pass is good on the weekends, too?” First, I am the one who told you there is a problem – don’t tell my kid what to do, talk to me. Second, no! No one mentioned their passes were for them and could be used at other times. It isn’t on your website, it wasn’t in an email and it is safe to assume your staff didn’t make a point of telling anyone.

Third, I resent that because her stuff is being stolen you want her to not participate in a way her friends are in the activity. Fourth, I don’t like that you just told my kid her money being stolen was her fault for bringing it in the first place.

That is when it hit me. This! This is where the culture of victim shaming begins. What bothers me is that this is a place that touts that kids in Arts programs achieve higher than other kids, studies say! But what are you teaching them, exactly? You are teaching them that lousy behavior will not be punished. You are teaching them that you don’t care enough to attend to the issue. You are teaching them their lives don’t matter. At the same time you are remodeling to accommodate growth which teaches them that what matters most to you is maximizing your profit.

Their company values page says “Give customers of all ages (yes, children ARE customers) a WOW experience every time through . . . giving accurate information and creating a safe and caring environment.” I walk out of there many days with a “Wow” experience alright but it is usually not a positive one.

They could look at the tape and find out who is stealing stuff and confront their parents. They could assemble all the kids and have a conversation about not taking things that don’t belong to them and returning those things with an apology if a mistake has been made. Because they are kids, it could be a puppet show to open for the magician when he comes each year. These are all opportunities to teach morals to kids but they want to teach my kid that if someone takes her things, doesn’t communicate changes properly or hurts her that it is really her fault for just being her and maybe she shouldn’t expect to have the privileges everyone else has. When will this country ever learn?

If you can read this . . .

A year ago, I thought school was going to be rough on Xyla. Despite everything I tried to do, she just flat out refused to learn to read from me. I used to tell everyone that if I was a teacher I would not be able to teach K-6 because there is so much foundational work that has to be done at that age and I don't know how to help them make those vital connections. I can't fathom letting one kid get out of my class having missed learning probably the most important skill in existence.

I told Xyla her whole world would change for the better once she learned how to read. She kept telling me she didn't want to know how to read.

At the beginning of last year I had the most frustrating experience. Xyla would bring her homework home and we would spend three hours trying to accomplish one page. At the end of kindergarten she was reading the Sam books just fine. Then suddenly she decided that she didn't know how to read at all. I had to try to get to the bottom of it. I went to her teacher first and asked why she was on such a low reading level. And her teacher told me  things that I will never forget. 1) She has had problems in the past with students who come from the private kindergarten Xyla went to. 2) Xyla performed very poorly on the reading assessment at the beginning of class. 3) Xyla didn't know her letter sounds.

There was one very important thing her teacher didn't tell me, but we will get to that.

I just about came out of my chair but realized that aggression would get me nowhere. I calmed myself and I tried to explain to her teacher that she did know all of her letter sounds and had known them since she was 3. I appealed to her to test her again. She refused. She said she would test her again at the end of the quarter. I went to her because I have a lot of teachers in my life who would have counseled me to not blind side her with the problem by going over her head.

She had placed Xyla with a remedial reading group along with the other kids in her class that went to her private kindergarten. I then understood why Xyla was suffering in her reading. Someone told her she couldn't. And she believed them. This is something I cannot relate to. Usually when people tell me I can't do something, I do it anyway - and look good doing it, too.

I can break this down a little. Xyla doesn't talk to people she doesn't know. So the second disclosure was something I could understand and tried to explain to the teacher about her personality and why it would have been difficult for anyone to get her to "perform" well, when everything was so new and uncomfortable. I wonder how many kids get placed in an underperforming group for the same reason. 

The first disclosure was a classic case of stereotyping and that just makes me angry. Even in Xyla's kindergarten class there were all levels of readers. There was a girl reading at a 3rd grade level in there. This woman would have pinched her off in the slower group too, just because. Angry, angry, I tell you.


The third disclosure was just patently untrue. I told her teacher Xyla not only knew her letter sounds but could actually read pretty well. She said that she didn't know how Xyla was doing it reading at home, that I probably read her the same stories and Xyla memorized them and repeated them back. Which would have been a pretty phenomenal thing in itself since I never read the same book twice.


I know that this sort of thing happens because it was how my grandfather made it through something like 6th grade not knowing how to read at all. They had the benefit of a one room school house with multiple grades in the same room. He could hear the older kids and regurgitate what they read almost verbatim.


At home, Xyla read books I had never read to her before she was reading them for the first time. So I was not going to let that stand. I asked Xyla to go get a book from the shelf. She picked one she had never read. I opened it and told her she wouldn't be in trouble if it was difficult but I wanted her to read some of the sentences in the book for me. And she did.

Even though this "trick" floored the teacher, she still insisted that Xyla was correctly placed in the remedial class and that no further testing would be done until the end of the quarter. How much time do students lose because of this kind of thinking?

I told her teacher that her placing Xyla in the remedial section was the worst thing she could do. Xyla already knows that being "brown" (as she calls it) she stands out in her class pretty much no matter what. She is very perceptive. When you seat her next to the trouble maker, she makes trouble because that is what the trouble maker does. When you set her next to the smart kids who hold still and work hard, that is what she does to fit in. I told the teacher that in the remedial class, Xyla will listen to the way the other kids are reading and she will do the same just so she doesn't stand out. Putting her in that class would hobble her more than I could express.

The teacher wouldn't hear any of it. The thing her teacher failed to tell me in the course of this was that she did not conduct the testing herself. One of her teacher's aides conducted it. Which means beyond the teacher/class/school all being new, a random person took her aside and asked her to read, when Xyla had no bearing of how well or poorly her classmates could read.

I took my concerns to the vice principal. She is a breath of fresh air and phenomenal at conflict resolution. I explained what was happening at home, I explained my visit with the teacher, I laid out the non-resolution that was suggested. She asked me what I wanted the outcome to be. I told her I had asked Xyla if she liked her teacher and she did. She liked her class.


I told her ultimately I want the best thing for my daughter, I told her I wanted her retested by someone who could make friends with her before they give the test. I told her I am willing to do what it takes from asking to switch classrooms to switching schools if this couldn't be resolved. I know it sounds like I am "that mom". You know the one who thinks nothing is wrong with their kid kicking the back of your seat in a theatre. The one who thinks their kid is a genius and can do no wrong when their delusion prevents them seeing what their kid really needs.

I admit I think Xyla is smart, but that is because she understood the concept of being able to affect humor at age 4. Most 4 year olds repeat what they hear, she was generating her own material and it was good stuff.

But I am not deluded. The vice principal ended up spending some time in her classroom and getting to know Xyla. Within a week or so of our meeting, she retested her and found that she was at a higher level. Learning from the teachers that she could, in fact, read, changed everything about how long it took us to do homework. It was taking 20 minutes, which is average for 1st grade homework.

This year we are entering the year with her being able to read words that I have not read to her, she can sound out most unfamiliar words on the fly. I can tell when she is getting tired of reading because she starts guessing (badly) at the words instead of reading them.

Since the new school year starts in just a couple of weeks, we have been talking about it to get her used to the idea. She said she wants to still be in her old class. I explained that all of her friends were also going to be going into 2nd grade and that she needed to learn at the next level and that her teacher would still be there just down the hall and she could visit whenever she wanted.

We went over to the school to look at the class list and we read it together so she could see that there were some kids she knew in there. We started trying to implement the school schedule and routine. We looked at the teacher's website and she wants the kids to read 20 minutes a night so we are trying to get that in there too.

Xyla feels so empowered by knowing how to read, too. She found her way to something by herself the other day by reading signs. When she came out I reminded her that it wasn't that long ago that she told me she didn't ever want to learn to read. I expressed that I didn't help her find her way, that she did that herself by reading. I asked her how that felt. She said it felt pretty good knowing where to go.

She gets down quite often when I read to her saying she is upset that I can read so fast and so well and she isn't as good at it as me. I told her it was all about practicing. I told her I have been reading for a long, long time and have had lots and lots of practice. I told her the more she reads the better she will be at it. It is just a lucky thing for me that reading together before bed is one of the things in her life that makes her feel loved. It makes bedtime run smoothly. When she starts dragging her feet to get to bed, I ask if she wants to have time to read. Suddenly, she runs in warp speed.

While there is the conventional wisdom that the single most important thing parents can do early and often to help their kids learn to read is to read with them, I want to add the equally important thing that you also need to do as they are learning. You need to tell them they can read. You need other adults to tell them they can read. Positive affirmation is so important. It will save you months of fighting over homework. I promise.

Room to Grow

I know a person who recently married her husband again to keep the peace in their home. She stated honestly that she was sure the marriage would end in less than 3 years. I started thinking about that in my own life. I have been an “old maid/spinster” for a long time. My perspective of her situation is one that believes that her husband was giving an honest effort to symbolically display his willingness to own the process of changing himself into the man she needs. Caveat: I am not a member of that relationship so my perspective is seriously skewed and does not reflect the reality the people face. I had one thought that has haunted me since she made her confession. I thought, “Aren’t you going to give him room to change and grow?”.

Then I remembered, those things we see about others that bother us most are things we usually don’t like about ourselves. So I decided that my attitude toward the situation is not about her, it is about me. I have been reading an article that talks about how we sabotage our relationships (www.positivelypositive.com). One of three suggestions they have for ending the cycle is to manage our expectations of the other person. My interpretation: give them room to be who they are.

If I am going to give them room to be who they are, I have to do something that is hard to do. I have to erase all of the trappings I put on them and really see them for who they are. Something I expect them to do my direction, but forgot that was a two way street.

I was involved in a relationship with a person who would frequently change from a confident extrovert to an irrationally fearful person and I could never figure out why. Those times when the switch hit were the times I was suffocating him in my expectations. I wasn’t giving him the room to be who he was. I lost a phenomenal friendship.

I have had so many people tell me they are intimidated by my accomplishments and they are afraid to get close to me. I think the part they don’t say is that they think I will expect lofty aspirations from them and they are afraid to disappoint me. What they never stick around long enough to learn is that I . . . fail . . . at my aspirations all . . . the . . . time. Allthetime. I am not afraid of it though. I am the kind of person who believes failure is a chance to start again with more information. If you see me achieve something, it probably isn’t the first time I tried it. Remember I mentioned that I am a “spinster”.

I have to do better about showing my vulnerabilities. Mostly because I see reactions in my daughter when certain things happen that more than fearing being in trouble, she fears not fitting into my expectation of her. That is the most terrifying thing in her life. That she will be rejected by me because she is not the person she is expected to be. I am not sure when the epiphany will hit but I am trying to emphasize whenever I can that she makes good choices and has good ideas, even when it isn’t what I would do.

She told me she wants to be just like me, she tried – and I mean it was painful to watch – to love tomatoes. She tried so hard because it was what I liked and she wanted to be like me. I told her I felt loved that she wanted to be like me but that she was also her own person. I told her that I wouldn’t love her less if she didn’t like tomatoes. Her dad doesn’t like them, neither does her uncle and that is ok. Then I mentioned that she likes seaweed snacks and I can’t handle them. I told her it is ok for her to like things I don’t like too. It is ok for her to be a different person from me and I will still love her. The important thing to remember is that our actions toward others should lean closer to showing love rather than exclusion.

She has a friend who I overheard telling her that she would be her friend and give her some item, only if she stayed by her side all day. I checked that right there. I told her “friendship should never be conditional and should never be bought. Either you are her friend or you are not, that should never have anything to do with stuff. This is the same friend Xyla and I talked about earlier in the school year. She said she wasn’t sure if she could be friends with her anymore because this friend wouldn’t let her play with other kids and sometimes she just wanted to play with other kids. She said that every time she wanted to play with someone else, this friend would tell her she wasn’t her best friend anymore.

First, I asked her how she felt about that. She said it made her feels sad. Before school started I asked her to keep an eye out for kids who sit the fence, who don’t get included, who don’t have any other friends. And she has done really well at that. When I went to lunch with her at school, all of the kids told me they loved her because when they felt lonely and new and awkward, Xyla was there to be a friend. She said she likes how that feels to help others who feel left out but that this friend wouldn’t let her do that.

I told her what her friend did was called manipulation. It is a way for people who are scared to lose the friendship to make you feel bad for “leaving”, even momentarily, so that you won’t leave. I told her this is fear people have because they have lost things like friendship before and it hurt. I told her that she had a choice. I told her this is something she will encounter many times in her life. Any choice she made she didn’t have to put up with that behavior but she would have to confront it.

I told her there were at least three options I could see and maybe she might think of another way. The first option is to not be friends with her anymore. She didn’t like that option. The second option is to be friends with her but explain that it is ok to have more than one friend and that her playing with other kids doesn’t mean their friendship was over, they would still be friends tomorrow and for a long time. The third option is to have the other kid come play with both of them. I told her she was the only one who could decide what she wanted to do. I told her it would feel scary at first but she needed to ask for what she wanted and that I would support whatever decision she made.

She never told me what she decided but I can see the results. There are many, many times when she declines to spend time with this girl. There are times when they are nearly inseparable. Whenever this person requests a playdate, I always ask Xyla when we are away from her if she wants to play with her. And I support her decision.

I tell her my expectation is not that she will be just like me, my expectation is that she tries always to treat people well. My expectation is that she will not allow unwelcome manipulation. My expectation is that she will ask clearly for what she wants. I tell her no one can do these things perfectly. I tell her, it is what I expect of myself every day and I often fail. The important part is to try. I tell her how much I learn from her every day (she never believes it – maybe one day she’ll read this blog and realize I wasn’t kidding).  We both have to learn how to recognize our emotions, express what we want and deal with the consequences, whatever they may be.

And then I have to give her room to grow.