Kids Archives - Kristen Anne Glover

The Sweet Middle

The sweet middle

He sidles up to me and takes my hand as we walk along past the reclusive tiger and the shaggy sloth bear. The sun tosses freckles across my son’s nose, and the air hugs us close.

His palms are rough from dirt-clod making and fort building. They are sweaty and sticky with boyhood, and I try not to wonder if he washed his hands after touching the snake.

He is seven, and the babyhood has stretched right out of his face. He tells me he knows how to spell “Mississippi.” It’s a secret he’s been saving for just such an occasion. “Oh yeah?” I taunt. “Show me.”

And he does.

“M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I.” Micah flashes the toothy smile of a second grader whose teeth are too big for his face.

My nose stings with the sudden urge to spill hot tears all over the pathway through Asia because it’s almost over—this salty-sweet season of his childhood is almost over. I squeeze my son’s hand tighter and look down into his thinning face and wonder if this will be the last time, the last time he puts his hand into mine and skips along next to me with cheerful acquiescence.

I won’t let go for anything in the world, snake smell or not.

Sweet season

We walk past the tree house playground. It is Way Past Naptime and the toddlers are eating wood chips and hurling sippy cups and using their words to communicate just how unlikely it is that they are going to leave willingly. The mamas are running on fishy crackers and juice pack fumes and looking every bit like they had no idea what they were getting into when their husbands said, “Honey, let me give you a massage.”

I want to stop and tell them that it is worth it. They are knee-deep in planting season, now, and torn up like a field in spring.

It is hard to imagine it will ever be any other way.

But I am just a few warm months further into the season, and those muddy, upturned fields are greening with the evidence of a work well done. I hold onto my son’s sticky hand and know that by the grace of God, some of the things I planted are growing. (And by the grace of God, some of the things I planted are not). Beautiful leaves are unfolding where furrows once lay, and I have the hope of a harvest in fields I once fought to win.

It is so worth it.

Beautiful leaves are unfolding where furrows once lay

It is hard still; of course it is hard. The labor doesn’t stop when the babies are birthed. It just…changes. There are weeds to pull and plants to prune—but I look down at that boy by my side and realize we are working together now, most days. The child who once would have gone to the cross over apple juice is now my companion in the sowing.

This is the sweet middle season, when my babies are not quite babies, but they’re not quite grown. It is the respite between tantrums and dating. My kids don’t need me as much now, but they need me enough. I can sleep for eight hours straight because they’re not driving yet. They can do their own laundry, and the house stays cleaner even if the fridge is emptier.

They are learning to pull their own weeds and plant their own seeds and work with me on becoming who they were meant to be. We stand side-by-side in the same field, more friends than anything, striving for the same beautiful unfolding.

Oh, yes. It is worth it.

I watch a mama wrestle her child down from the curly slide. She is up to her boots in the mucky part of motherhood, and I know she feels it. But I want to tell her that she is almost there–almost to the season where she can see the worth of her work. One day soon, she will look down and realize she isn’t dragging anyone along behind.

She is walking side-by-side with her child, right through the sweet middle. And she won’t let go for anything in the world.

We stand side-by-side in the same field, more friends than anything, striving for the same beautiful unfolding

My Kids Don’t Play Sports

My kids don’t play sports (and they’re okay)

There was time in my childhood when my parents thought soccer lessons were a good thing. They secured me a spot on the local team, and I got a t-shirt.

I was not opposed to this plan because I had observed that children who play on soccer teams are often given treats after the game. Sometimes, they even get taken to McDonald’s.

The coaches put me in the back corner near the terrified goalie because I didn’t understand what it meant to “be more aggressive with the ball.” Being more aggressive with the ball meant getting kicked in the shins, and I was no fool.

We lost every game.

Even so, I came away with the idea that being involved in a sport was a good thing. It develops character. You learn how to lose. You learn how to win. You build friendships and practice cooperation. You learn how to cope when you get pneumonia from standing in the freezing rain for two hours while your teammates fight over a ball they could very well share.

When I had my own kids, my husband and I did the same thing. We got our kids involved.

Soccer: I got the t-shirt

Only, things had changed a bit since I was a kid. Sports involvement had become an expected thing. If you are a half-way decent parent, you enrolled your child in a sport. At least one. Per season.

If you don’t, you must be Amish, and if you’re Amish, people don’t know how to talk to you unless it’s about furniture.

When a neighbor found out my four-year-old didn’t play baseball, she offered to drive him herself. I had just given birth to twins, so my lack of initiative could be forgiven, but clearly an intervention was in order. “We’re not really into activities yet,” I said, bouncing two boys on my lap. “I kind of want him to enjoy playing at home, being a kid.”

“But he’s four!” she responded with a look that made me feel like he was thirty-six and still living at home with his cats. “What does he do?”

I looked around. At that moment, he was driving his cars around the kitchen island with his sisters. They were sharing. Cooperating. Learning to work together. Building relationships.

Huh.

Eventually, I got my act in order. I found something for those kids to do. My husband and I lugged equipment and traded kids and sat in dark parking lots and ate the fast food we said we didn’t eat and wrote checks and wondered if it was too early to look for product endorsements because dang, sports aren’t cheap.

My children were parsed out into different groups based on age and sometimes even gender because kids of different ages and genders don’t play together, Silly. My children became spectators to their siblings’ games instead of participants.

Some weeks, we spent every night away from home. We ate in the car or in the stands and did homework in hallways. I spent more time with my minivan than I did with my husband. We dragged sweaty kids home and sent them to bed too late and woke them up, cranky, in the morning. I choreographed our weekends so well, I felt like a dance instructor.

All so that my kids could be involved in something they would likely never, or rarely, do as adults.

“Mom, do we have to go anywhere today?” became their new mantra.

Then one day, I sat by my computer to register the kids for another semester of sports and music and church events. My dog-eared calendar sprawled out in front of me, covered in so many pencil marks, it looked like it was about to undergo cosmetic surgery.

My bank account wheezed.

I didn’t know how to make it all happen, and I felt exhausted at the thought. I did not like this life, this activity-driven life. I did not want to waste my motherhood in the carpool lane, and I did not want to watch my children live out their childhood on a field.

I realized I had been buying into a lie that busy is better, that activities are normal, that an interrupted family life is worth it if my kid can swim. I was teaching my children that they should grab as much good stuff as they can, instead of waiting for what is best.

And isn’t that the very thing I was trying to un-teach myself in my adult life?

Soccer is good. Football is good. Swimming is good.

But so is catching fireflies. And building tree forts. And playing tag and capture the flag and hide-and-go-seek. It is sweet to win the Little League Championship. But it is delicious to spend a whole Saturday morning in your pajamas with a book.

If they don’t play sports, what will they do?

When hours of the week are spent on sports, I wonder what is lost. I wonder if we can ever regain the value of unstructured time, that margin in life where kids can play, imagine, talk, explore, and create. The childhood that is full of secret codes and catching stuff and getting dirty. The childhood where dinner time is around a table and the fridge is covered in artwork the kids did that Saturday because they could.

I am not against sports. Please don’t misunderstand. I do not drive past the soccer fields on Saturday and hurl insults at the parents on the sidelines. I get it. Respect, soccer moms.

It’s just not for us. Not now. Our family culture has different priorities, and I’m comfortable enough in my motherhood now to accept the fact that what’s expected for most children to do is not the best for us.

It’s not the best use of our time, and it’s not the best use of our money.

That might be different for you—but if you are reading this and your soul cries out because you are so tired of hauling your kid to some activity you wish you could quit—oh, there is grace for that too. You can stop. You do not have to do any of it, and your child will turn out just fine. Hear me: he will be just fine.

In our home, we now spend nearly every evening at home, except Sunday. We linger around the table because there’s nowhere better to be. Then we get on the jammies and gather for family devotions. We sing. We pray. There is no rush—the words can slip in slowly if they want.

Saturdays are lazy, and I make pancakes. Last weekend, the kids built a fort out of plywood and an old side table they scavenged from a dumpster and logs from our wood pile. It is an eyesore to the entire neighborhood, and it is glorious.

Faith made Kya a crown from a palm tree, and she wore it around looking every bit like Pipi Longstocking until the wind caught it and almost blew her into New Mexico.

Kya before she blew into New Mexico

They played a Monopoly game for three days straight, and one of them cried when she lost, and I had to remind her that not everyone can win every time. Or if you’re like my old soccer teammates, not everyone can win ever.

But Jeff went out and played with them, and then friends came over with a football. The wound was soon forgotten.

The kids picked up the entire house, vacuumed, dusted, folded their laundry, cleaned out their dressers, dusted, took care of the pets, managed the dishes, and straightened the bathroom.

The five of them negotiated whether to play on the iPad for ten minutes each or watch a movie, because this mama won’t let them do both. Jeff made popcorn. When it was over, Kya read bedtime stories to the boys.

Sometimes, people ask me how my children will grow into adulthood without a sport to teach them all the things sports are supposed to teach them: Cooperation, sportsmanship, hard work, diligence, patience, practice, and teamwork. Won’t they feel jilted because no one ever stood on the sidelines and cheered for them?

I smile. They are gaining all of those skills, and more, just without the t-shirt.

Three Words

It was easy to tell with Kya. She listened with wide, vacant eyes and let jumbled words tumble out of her lips. She could not count beyond the number two and stumbled over words longer than a syllable.

We knew with her.

Micah was different. He had a speech delay, to be sure, but his logical brain and quick-thinking masked the reality that he would not be able to read without a daily, excruciating attempt to get the letters and words to hang in a room that had no hooks.

But then there was Paul. Unlike the other two, he took to reading fairly easily.

Except when he didn’t. One day, he could read without missing a word, and the very next day, he couldn’t differentiate between “a” and “the” and confused all the vowel sounds like he had never seen them before. His inconsistency seemed more a matter of the will than a matter of the mind, so I pressed him harder to pay attention. “Focus, Paul!” was my daily mantra, but it didn’t help.

The truth is, I missed it with Paul.

When your twin is barely comprehensible and your sister can’t remember 2+2 without daily drilling, who notices when you turn your sixes and nines around and put b’s on the beginning of words? It’s just cute that you say “bemember” and “beget” and call your jeans “pantses.”

Nevermind that you can’t get dressed in the morning without fifteen reminders, and your shirt is always on backward and for the life, you cannot figure out what’s different about d’s and b’s and p’s. Reading is a daily crap shoot, and sometimes, Mom gets so frustrated, she whaps you on the head with a tattered copy of Little Bear’s Friend because you just read that word, and now you can’t. The other kids have reason to struggle but you…well, you don’t have any of those excuses, so you must not be trying hard enough.

Paul lived seven years before I sat in a learning specialist’s office and listened as she explained how his reading comprehension was at 0% of grade level. He understood oral directions like a four-year-old. An average four-year-old, she emphasized, lest I had delusions of genius preschoolers blowing the curve.

“He also has a high level of anxiety,” she added after thoroughly revealing the degree to which I had been blind to Paul’s needs.

“He does?” I stammered.

“He tells me he worries,” she said, looking at me over her big desk. “I asked him why he doesn’t like school, and he said, ‘I always worry.’”

It was right there in her report. She turned her iPad around so I could see it for myself. “I always worry.”

Three words.

Three words to convict the woman who everyone thinks is so patient and never raises her voice. The woman who writes a blog about children and tells mothers they should enjoy their full quivers because it is the highest calling of God in their lives.

Three words that mean, “I always worry because my mom gets upset when I don’t read well.”

“I always worry because she says my name with anger in her voice when I can’t do what she thinks I can.”

“I always worry because I never know when I’m doing it wrong until she does.”

“I always worry because I should be smarter, but I’m not.”

Three words.

Not “I am loved” or “everyone learns differently” or “you are exceptional” or any other words I wished were planted more deeply in his identity.

I always worry.

My heart snagged on those three words and unraveled me. Oh, my sweet boy.

I had tried so hard, and failed. I had been frustrated, overwhelmed, and exhausted. Day after day, we got up and did it again, only to feel like we weren’t making any progress at all.

And I resented it.

All the Pinterest ideas in the world and my kid still couldn’t remember the word “the.”

Still, I wanted to believe that all the hard work was paying off because it mattered. It mattered that these children learned to work with their disabilities. It mattered that they felt loved even if they couldn’t spell. It mattered that I kept my patience because good mothers don’t get frustrated when their dyslexic children actually act dyslexic.

But I did. Big time.

I drove home with tears sneaking into the corners of my eyes, blurring the road.

Later, when Paul alone remained at the table picking at his dinner the way he does when the food is mixed up and he can’t tell whether he might bite into a tomato, I said, “Your learning specialist told me what you said today.”

Paul’s face flushed and he ducked his head like he thought I had a copy of Little Bear handy. His eyes turned soupy and he could not talk. So he nodded, and then he cried and poured out the broken bits of his heart. He believed he couldn’t do anything right because I get mad at him when he makes mistakes.

I do not get mad at you when you make mistakes! I wanted to say. It’s just frustrating when you don’t try!

I would have said it, too, if the lady behind the big desk had not made it abundantly clear that this little boy had been trying his hardest for long enough, and I had not noticed.

I looked at the tears in my baby’s eyes, knowing full well that it was my sin that put them there.

All this time, I had been crushing Paul. His cheerful, sweet spirit was not enough to earn my favor. I had successfully taught him that he fell short. He could not read the way I thought he should. He could not focus long enough to complete a one-step task or remember to chew with his mouth closed or figure out those crazy b’s and d’s and p’s.

He worried about all those things because every day, they proved to him that Paul simply was not good enough for me.

All of that, in three words. Three horribly true words.

If the world had rolled over on me, it would have been a mercy. With my tears mingling with his, I grabbed my son and whispered three words of my own into his ears: “I’m so sorry.”

Sorry hardly seemed like enough. All I wanted to do was run and hide. How could God have given such precious gifts to such a woman as me? He knew I was impatient, intolerant, and psycho-perfectionistic. And look what happened! Look at what I’d done to my son—I’d taught him that he was somehow less than he should be.

How can sorry be enough for that?

It isn’t enough, but sorry is the gate by which grace rushes in. And grace makes up for what sorry cannot do.

Grace tells me that motherhood is more than just the balance of my successes and failures. God gives children to women who do not deserve it, of which I am a shining example. We break these children with our brokenness, sometimes, and they break us right back.

It is awful, and I can do nothing some days but beg God to keep my sin from taking root in their lives, to protect them from me.

But the beauty of it is this: somehow, God works all these things together to make each of us more like Himself. God chose Paul for me knowing that this mothering thing would be the single greatest refining fire in my life. He also knew that my mothering, mistakes and all, would be the primary shaping force in Paul’s young life to draw him to Christ.

Isn’t that what we need to know as mothers? That despite our failings, God works all these things together for the good of those who have been called to it—mothers and children, children and mothers, all stumbling closer to Jesus as He shouts through our weaknesses of our need for Him. We need the cross.

And when we forget it, God is gracious to remind us.

Even if He has to say it in just three words.