Throughout Sarah’s life there have been many times when my mom has reminded me that I get to have some agency and power over my life. This may seem obvious and it may seem that I was already exercising much of my agency and control when being a parent of Sarah at any age, but… there is also the impression I can have of being trapped. This feeling has happened many times and my mom’s reminder helps me untrap myself from being beholden to Sarah’s upsets. Last Sunday evening I went outside to our porch couch to read, leaving Sarah and Amy inside. They knew where I was so that should have been fine, but I didn’t anticipate that when Amy plugged her phone in to charge next to Carl’s side of the bed while she did her Schroth exercises, that Sarah would rip the cord out of Amy’s phone and they would get into a massive fight that included Sarah putting Amy in a headlock. While I had left the main front door open, the storm door is just that and isn’t a screen door, so I didn’t hear Amy yelling for me at the top of her lungs. Somehow she did get free of the headlock and came to find me, but I felt awful that I hadn’t heard her. And then I felt trapped, as if I couldn’t even leave the girls alone in the house and be outside without risk of all hell breaking loose. I didn’t even feel like I could call someone to talk about how hard it all was.
There is a scene in The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, about Ichabod Crane and the headless horseman, in which Ichabod finds himself facing the bridge he wants to ride across but moving steadily farther away from it because he is sitting backwards on his horse. Sarah has come so far and is so independent in so many ways, and yet when I have moments of feeling trapped inside my own house and that I’m not able to leave my 17 year old alone or alone with her sister without risk of screaming tantrums or fights, then I feel like Ichabod. The goal of Sarah being able to be on her own is my bridge and I feel like we are galloping in the wrong direction!
But, back to untrapping myself and turning the horse around. It is true that right now we do still have to arrange things so that Sarah has some adult in earshot at almost all times, but I have also taken proactive steps towards limiting her technology use (because it may fuel her volatility) and towards hopefully reducing the screaming and banging on the door when Amy uses the bathroom. Sarah gets a set amount of tv time in the morning and in the afternoon plus some time with her phone that is already programmed with limits. She has been cooperative about stopping when I say it is time, which is an improvement from when I didn’t have clear limits established. I have also explained the consequences of banging on the bathroom door and screaming: she loses technology for that day or the next depending on when in the day the upset occurs. This same consequence will be enforced if Sarah throws her shoes at home or at school or anywhere. She is allowed to scream and be upset without consequences (unless it is at school), but she isn’t allowed to throw shoes or bang on the bathroom door. Friday night Sarah was extremely upset with Amy being in the bathroom, expressing this through banging and yelling, so she lost technology for yesterday. And we all lived. Carl pointed out that we needed to be on deck for more support as Sarah processed her feelings, and he spent a lot of time listening to her and talking with her about the situation - and about foxes and boxes, of course. The day went well overall and I am feeling at peace with having proactively set the stage for how to handle things in the future. It feels like I am regaining some control. Part of me is embarrassed to be sharing all of this because it seems like Parenting 101, but it’s not always so clear when you are in the thick of things and the slope away from empowered clarity can be slippery and invisible. Sometimes the things I do to get through a day are actually the very things making it harder to get through the day, it just takes time to see it.
In other news, Carl came home Tuesday night from his trip across the Atlantic, bringing several boxes of Jaffa cakes from England to satisfy the requirement of those of us who stayed at home. It is really great having him back.
The girls had a wonderful week of Camp Anna. They made tiny background sets and performed skits in front of a green screen, combining them so it looked like Amy and her bestie were being attacked by something in a nursery and as if Sarah and Anna were foxes eating food from a box in the forrest. They went to a library and found books about art and worked on skills for the CAPA portfolio (for Amy and her bestie). They wrote artist bios and descriptions of a piece of art. They had food outside the library and the wind blew an empty paper plate into Sarah’s face, which she found extra hilarious as Anna said she got a pie in the face. Sarah’s artist bio is, “Sarah W is a fox. She likes food and music and stripes. At camp we went to the library and ate outside. Sarah got a pie in the face. Her mottos is ‘x marks the spot.’” They made lemonade and macarons and held a lemonade stand at the end of our block, decorating the sidewalk with the longest hopscotch board ever. They went to a pool and Sarah enjoyed a giant mushroom that provided a shower of water, while Amy did swimnastics - her own term for when she does flips and cartwheels in the water.
Inspired by our continued talk about the emotions from Inside Out, especially to process Sarah’s response to Amy being the in bathroom, Amy drew a picture of Sarah-Anger reading a newspaper headline of “Amy uses the bathroom.” I am continually impressed by how both girls are able to talk about a situation with love and humor even if the situation itself was fraught with upset and anger. Amy also had fun drawing several potato emotions to represent the different characters if they were inside Carl’s head. I love how she can do something seemingly simple and yet bring subtle genius to it. Anxiety’s little wavy mouth and bent knee are the perfect little touches to make that character come to life.
Talking with Carl yesterday, Sarah said, “I miss 10th grade. I’m schoolsick.” Our fingers are still crossed that she will get the same bus driver she had last year, but we probably won’t find out any details until a week before she starts school. I think she misses her driver more than anything else.
I enjoyed a lot of reading time this week. I reread The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger and was struck by how powerful and heart wrenching it is - and how wise. When we are finding fault with everything and everyone around us, it is probably because we are heartbroken about something and it’s not really about the other people. I finished Amor Towles' Table for Two. I love everything Towles has written, but my favorite is A Gentleman in Moscow. I don’t always love what he has his characters do, but I love the way he puts observations and philosophies about life into his stories. I also read Wicked Marigold by Caroline Carlson and I cannot recommend it enough if you want a light fun read that is also profoundly wise about finding one’s place in life. I laughed out loud on several occasions.
Lots of love to all of you.
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