Insomnia and the Stay at Home Mother

Published @ www.yellowbrick.me  December, 2015

I told a friend of mine the other day, that just as the saying goes, “You don’t know what you can do until you try,” there should also be one that says “You don’t know what you CAN’T do until you try.”  This summer, I learned what I can’t do.  I can’t be a stay at home mother to my two children.  Physically, I can, but mentally, not so much.  I can stay at home with one child.  I could do that for a while (and did this summer, much to my surprise, succeed in staying home with my 3 year old with no mental detriment to either of us).  But staying home with both of my children was altogether too difficult a thing for me to master.
I have mentioned this to other mothers my age, with kids of similar ages, and gotten lots of different responses, but without a doubt, it is always the mother who hasn't done it, who sighs and says "But that's the holy grail!"  I smile and say that I guess it isn't for me.

The funny thing about all of this, is that this shouldn't have come as a surprise. I have always loved working, and have never been great with needy people.  This is not the best of all possible combinations for a stay at home mother.
And yet, when I couldn't do it, and up until very recently, I viewed it as a massive failure.  Deep in my mind, where my nagging insecurities hold sway over all else, I couldn't help but hear the chant of "bad mother...bad mother."  Did it mean that I didn't love them enough?  That they were somehow getting the shortest end of the stick by being my children?  I have wanted to be a mother for my whole life, waited, getting more and more frustrated to meet the man who would be the father of my children, and here I was.  I had achieved the dream!  I had the husband and the son and the daughter.  I had the house in the town where I grew up, near parks and playgrounds.  But it somehow wasn't enough for me. Or maybe it was too much.   

This whole issue came as a surprise to me.  I am a person who believes that she can do everything.  With a little practice, I feel that I can be at least average at anything I set my mind to.  When the daycare called and said that we could take my son out for the summer, with his place for the fall intact, I jumped at the chance.  I don’t often get to be the one bringing money-saving news to my husband.  There was a tiny seed of doubt digging itself in in that aforementioned part of my brain, but I easily ignored it, as summer was months away, and I am his mother, after all.  This should come naturally.  We went ahead and signed my daughter up for camp for the month of July, leaving me with both children for two weeks (yes, only two weeks…how could I fail at that?), before we took a family vacation, and then we all went back to school and work. 

After a few weeks of summer passed, and Josh and I fell into an easy routine of lazy mornings, and swimming afternoons, I was feeling pretty good.  I could do this.  I was doing it!  But in the evenings, that tiny seed of doubt began to grow.  I would pick Abby up from camp, and the fighting would begin.  But, I rationalized, camp was tiring.  She has always been difficult when tired.  This did not foreshadow anything.  I stomped on that larger shoot of doubt.  We would be fine.

As the impending weeks grew closer, I tried to plan a couple of day trips.  But if the whole point of this exercise was to save money, I couldn’t justify more than a couple.  Okay.  We would all just go to the pool in the afternoons.  We could continue the schedule Josh and I had already grown used to.  But Abby did not want to go to the pool. When I took her, she got cold too easily and too quickly.  She wanted to do indoor things.  She wanted to stay home.  She wanted the iPad.  Josh wanted to go to the pool.  He wanted to blow bubbles.  He wanted the iPad.  It got to the point that the night before, with no activities planned, I would start to get anxious.  I would lie in bed, awake, so awake.  I am an insomniac by nature, but never to this extent.  Once a year, I go through a three-day streak of sleeplessness.  But this was ridiculous.  Every night, the same thing.  Even when a doctor prescribed sleeping medication, I couldn’t sleep.  This was unheard of!  What’s odd is that I wasn’t lying there thinking about, or worrying about my kids.  One night I just couldn’t get “The Golden Girls” theme song out of my head.  Other nights I grew angry listening to my husband snore.  I moved to the couch, but there were so many sounds, and there was light everywhere.  But most nights it was just blankness, and no sleep.  I knew it was anxiety when my heart started speeding up the minute I lay down.  But I still didn’t tie it to my children.  And, rapidly, things got worse.  Because now, I wasn’t just trying to entertain my children for 12 hours a day, but I was doing it on one or two hours of sleep.  I was shaky, and short tempered.  I felt sick much of the day.  Everything made me angry.  Sounds and smells were intensified.  I screamed at Abby for dragging her feet in the grocery store.  The scraping sound was making me crazy.  It filled my brain.  She seemed confused.  I can’t blame her. 

Finally I went to a sleep specialist. 

He made me cry.  I hadn’t really done that yet.  He made me talk.  I hadn’t done that either.  He asked me to point to the emotion I felt most often, and I pointed, shakily, to scared.  My finger seemed drawn there of its own accord.  And I finally admitted, “I am scared…all of the time.”  He asked about my schedule.  I went through each day since I had stopped sleeping.  It was not until that moment that I realized that the insomnia started when I became a temporary stay at home mother to my two children.  He sat with me for 2 hours.  I had expected him to tell me to try yoga, to cut out caffeine and alcohol, and to breathe deeply.  He told me to go back to work.  He told me to find me time.  He told me it was okay not to be everybody’s everything all of the time. 

I didn’t sleep better that night.  I wish it were that simple.  But a couple of nights later, when we were on vacation, and the kids were not falling asleep, I broke down crying, and really talked to my husband.  He listened, dealt with the kids, as he had been doing each and every night since this began, and finally, that night I slept. 

I cannot be a stay at home mother to my two children.  I can be a working mom (I do that pretty well), and a wife, and a teacher, and a daughter, and a person I am proud of in most respects. 

But for me, the holy grail is balance, and I'm still trying to learn that lesson.

Battle Wounds

Published @ www.yellowbrick.me
Before I had kids, I made all sorts of judgments about the parents I saw around me.  I am a teacher, so I was always conferencing with and questioning the motives of my students’ parents.  It seemed inevitable.  I couldn’t believe the choices they seemed to knowingly be making.  How could they let their kids talk to them that way?  Why couldn’t they control them?  Why were they over-programming their kids?  Why were they under-programming their kids?  I imagined all of the things I would do differently.  Couldn’t they see that they weren’t doing things right?

I am now a parent.  I have two young children.  I am still a teacher, but parenting has changed the way I look at not only the other parents I see, but also at the kids I teach.  There are so many choices we all make each day, but trying to understand each other should be the first one.

Probably the most important thing that I have learned through this exhausting, yet wonderful process of motherhood, is that support from my community is sometimes the only thing that makes a difference.  I cannot do this job without other parents.  I cannot get through a day without asking questions and telling stories, and laughing and swearing and just drawing in and drawing from my community of parents. 

This summer, I sat at the baby pool with my 3-year-old son and watched a young mother with her toddler.  I knew the anxious look on her face.  I recognized my own expression from 5 years ago as I sat alone at the same baby pool hoping someone would welcome me into the fold.  I didn’t know how to ask to be included.  I didn’t know how to ask for help.  Was this all supposed to just come naturally, as it seemed to for others?  How would I know if I was doing it wrong?  It turned out to be a very lonely summer.  So, when I saw this young mom, I moved closer to her in the pool.  I smiled.  I asked her questions.  She was new to town, and I gave her my number.  I texted her when I got home and told her that she could ask me any question about the town or the schools or anything at all.  I would help her any way I could.  Though I wasn’t new to town when I sat in that baby pool 5 years ago, I was new to mommyhood, and I wish someone had done the same for me.

We need to remember that parenthood can feel like a minefield.  And no one should be left to figure it out by him/herself.  I have developed my community, but it took time.  I have found the other parents in my sphere with whom I can laugh as we all just barely survive, but not everyone has, and when they do what they must, and cast into the void that is the internet, they do so at their own risk.  There is so much criticism, so much negativity. 

So let’s all use www.yellowbrick.me to make the choice to extend the support I did to my young friend at the baby pool.  Let us truly be a community of peers.  Let us remember that parenthood is the hardest and most important job of them all, and that we have all stepped on a mine at one time or another.  I’ll show you my scars, if you show me yours!

March of the Juniors

This piece was first published in www.grownandflown.com

Every year around this time I have a talk about stress and anxiety with my junior year A.P. students.  Most of these students are your typical high achievers.  They have been working toward college for as long as they can remember.  Many of them know where they will apply, and have known the grades they need and the test scores they need to achieve, since middle school.  Many of them are taking 4 or 5 Advanced Placement classes, are involved in clubs and sports, and have a part time job.  They generally have ridden out the storm until now.  It is in March when I begin to see the changes.

In March, 2^nd semester is in full swing.  We are halfway through quarter 3 and progress reports have gone out.  While most of us are eagerly awaiting spring and warmer weather, my students are fully aware that with the spring comes testing.  They are gearing up to take S.A.T.s, to take or re-take A.C.T.s (most now take both), the Smarter Balance Assessment (S.B.A.C), which is the new junior year test/graduation requirement in Connecticut, and A.P. exams.  They have been told by guidance counselors that if they don’t get a certain score on their S.A.T.s, the top colleges won’t even look at their applications.  They have been told that they need to go to graduate school to get a good job.  College is no longer good enough.  They have been told that if they don’t get into a “good” college, then they won’t get into a “good” graduate school.  They are terrified.

One student said to me that he has never been as stressed out as he is right now.  He said he is working harder than he has ever worked, and yet his grades have not changed.  He feels he understands the material he is learning and has proved it, yet he only has Bs.  He can’t wrap his brain around this fact.  I can.  I have known it all year.  He is an incredibly bright young man, who is spread way too thin.  He is currently taking 5 A.P. classes.  Each of these classes is equivalent to a college course.  In college, each of these classes would meet every other day, and he would have time in between classes to work.  In high school, each of these classes meets every day.  He may have an hour of homework from each of these classes a night.  He also has one or two other classes.  He is in the music program, performing in concerts throughout the year, and often practicing after school.  He is involved in a club which travels to different schools, in order to hear panels of fantastic speakers.  This club meets once a month and the trips often take hours.  He does not “take” a lunch, so that he can include another class in his schedule instead.    This may sound extreme, but I have many students following similar schedules. 

In another class, my students talk about how they feel like their parents are more anxious than they are.  They hear mixed messages.  One student says that Mom says, “Don’t worry, just do your best!” and then the next day asks why she only received a B on her test and doesn’t she care about her future?  She works hard.  She is doing her best, but she can see that Mom is worried.  Others told her it was because she was the oldest, and I tried my best to explain how as parents we want so much for our children to have everything, to have every option under the sun.  We want to be in that classroom, taking the tests, controlling for every possible situation, so that there is no further obstacle.  It drives us crazy that we can’t help more, and that turns into anxiety.

The problem, of course, is that that anxiety sits squarely on the shoulders of our teens.  So, they shoulder their own anxiety, and they shoulder their parents’ anxiety.  And to make matters worse, they are feeling the anxiety from their teachers as well.  One student told me that the first day of 2^nd semester, even his most “laid back” teachers amped up the pressure.  I remembered that day.  I did it too.  They walked in and I reminded them that the A.P. exam was in May.  We would start taking two multiple choice practices in one day, instead of one.  We would be holding more firm with timed essays.  No rewrites.  No more messing around.  I think those were my words.  Today, I apologized. 

What I find so interesting about this is that when I asked if they were planning on taking it easy next year, they looked at me like I was crazy.  Many of them are planning on taking just as many A.P. classes their senior year.  They will not see relief until they leave high school.  Ironically, for many of them, college will be easier than their junior and senior years of high school. 

This all feels like madness to me. 

So, what can we do?  I try to do my part.  My class, though it is an A.P. is not heavy on homework.  They will often have reading and annotating to do, but all of their writing is done in class.  They sometimes re-write essays for me on their own time, but I have a policy of only giving homework when it is absolutely necessary.  For some, mine might be the only class that does not pile it on.  I think we, as teachers, sometimes forget how much they have to do, and how little time they actually have.  We forget that they have other classes as well, and that the pressure and anxiety they feel is very real and immediate.

We need to remember that the score they get on the exam is less important than the experience they have in the class.  I am lucky to work in a school where the class is not taken away from me, if my scores aren’t perfect.  This should be the culture at every school.  Pressure trickles down. If my department head makes sure that I feel it, you can be sure my students will feel it too.

As parents, we need to remember that almost any school can be the “best” school for a kid.  Unless the student has specific needs, if he has been raised to be strong and confident, he will make his way no matter where he goes.  Support him, work with him if he needs it, but let him lead you.  If you see a change in his behavior, ask about it.  And give yourself days off too.  Maybe Thursday and Fridays are “no college talk days,” or some such variation.  Mostly, as hard as it may be to do, trust him.  He wants this just as much as you do.

So, around this time of year, as they trudge into my class, I try to keep it light.  I give them time to talk, as a class, about their stresses.  We still write essays and discuss texts, but we also look inward, and laugh and breathe.  I say as often as I can that what they do in college is more important than where they go, and hope that they hear my voice. 

I wish I had better answers.