Caring Heart: Homework Warden

As the school year heads into the last final push, the frantic crush to finish, the burden often seems heavy, not only for the child but for the parent. For foster parents, this has an added challenge. So today I share this meditation, born out of that frustration. 

I am not a homework warden!


They just don't get it.  I know that teachers expect parents to be able to motivate their kids to do schoolwork.  But I can't do that for him.  Other kids can be motivated by their parent because since early childhood they have worked to please their parents and to earn their praise.  Sure, adolescents rebel, but the emotional ties are still there, built on years of loving care.  I don't have that luxury.  I don't have that bond to use as a carrot or as a stick. No one seems to understand that he doesn't yet care enough about me to be motivated by me.  Not yet.  I can't be the warden that cajoles and coerces him to finish that science project, memorize those math facts, study for that history test, or even just read five pages each night.  Some days it is all I can do to get him to accept that I am the grownup in charge.  Help me become a parent figure to him.  Help him begin to care.  Help me to survive until he cares, or until teachers understand.  I cannot be a homework warden.  I am still struggling to be the parent for him. He needs to let me be a parent to him far more than he needs me to be a homework warden. 


Excerpted from "The Caring Heart Speaks: Meditations for foster, kinship, and adoptive parents" by Gail Underwood Parker    Artwork by Anna Parker David from the book cover. 

Quick Takes: Kids List #71-80

Before I start I apologize that my Thursday post somehow got lost in cyberspace somehow. I wrote it, hit "publish"and headed out the door.  It wasn't until last night that I realized it never showed up for some reason.  Sorry 'bout that! Anyway....moving on....

This is the eighth installment of "Kids List." My "Kids List" is things I wish all kids could get to experience before they are grown up and independent.   This month has a mix of small folk and bigger folk experiences. Use your grownup judgment to see what fits your child. 

  

Kids List #71-80

71. Jump on a trampoline 

72. Attend a Sabbath worship at a synagogue 

73. Spend an afternoon with someone over 80 years old 

74. Sleep over at a friend’s house 

75. Learn to use chopsticks and use them for a whole meal  

76. Hold a newborn baby

77. Learn a new dance  

78. Make homemade paper  

79. Plant a small garden and care for it through the summer

80. Learn to skip [297]

I try to do one Quick Takes entry each month from my Kids List. Hope you try some of these with your kiddos.  Search for "Kids List" to find #1-70 in earlier posts.

Photo Credit: sitejerk.com

Anything Can Happen...Book Dominoes

Speaking of libraries earlier this week..... Here is something fun for you and the kids to watch.... but I don't recommend you try it in your local library!

I especially love the way they duplicated it on the computer screens the book dominoes passed!

Video credit: LibraryIrelandWeek2011-Book Dominoes on Youtube.

Soapbox: Hard-wired for Compassion?

I heard a phrase recently that really struck a chord with me and got me thinking.  Movie Director Tom Shadyak was being interviewed about his recent life-revisions. [He went from Hollywood mansion living, directing hit comedies with Robin Williams, Jim Carrey, and more to giving away most of his money and living in a comfortable but small trailer. ]  Shadyak's latest movie [a documentary title "I Am"] interviews all sorts of people about the nature of mankind etc.  The statement he made was that we [humans] are "hard-wired for compassion."

Hard-Wired for Compassion

Think about that for a moment.  What an amazing concept to contemplate.  We as humans hard-wired, built,  to be compassionate. My thesaurus says compassion is like empathy, but a dictionary shows a shading that to me is a crucial difference.  Empathy is the "ability to recognize and understand someone else's feelings and emotions, even their experiences." Compassion is more often defined as "sympathy for another's pain, often including a desire to help."  Sympathy is not neutral. Sympathy is more than recognition. To me, empathy does not require more than dispassionately recognizing and understanding someone else's pain.  Compassion is far more. Compassion means feeling, regretting that pain, and wishing to ease that pain.  Empathy does not seem to require action, but compassion calls for, cries out for action.

Empathy makes you wonder how tornado or tsunami victims can pick up the pieces of their lives and move forward.  Compassion leads you to send money, support... in some way to try to make things better. After Sept 11, 2001 there was an explosion of empathy and sympathy, but compassionate action was seen immediately too... in everyone from New Yorkers handing out water bottles on the street to the Nova Scotians who were so amazing to the passengers of planes diverted to and stranded at their airports.

I like the concept of being hard-wired for compassion....


More about the hard science behind this next week!

Image credit: toppun.com, 123nonstop.com, wichitafallstx.gov

Focus on Fostering: Connecticut Conference

Last  weekend I presented two workshops at the annual CAFAP conference. [Connecticut Association of Foster and Adoptive Parents] in Mystic Ct.  The people were wonderful, the weather was beautiful but I was sicker than a dog! As a presenter you always want to do your best and be at your best. Instead I had coughing spasms over and over during for the fist half hour of the Friday workshop.  Then, with a fever raging I took some medicine that knocked me out... I slept through the dinner banquet, the evening and woke up 10 minutes AFTER my morning presentation was to begin.  Every presenters worst nightmare! I was down to the session in less than 15 minutes, but between arriving late, the fever and nausea I felt awful!  I have heard from several people that they loved the workshops and I hope so, but I feel so frustrated about it.  I drove home to Maine and spent Mother's Day and Monday trying to recover from whatever flu it was.

So... if any of you Connecticut folks are reading... Thank you, Thank you, Thank you....  for your understanding,  and your cough lozenges, and the iced-water glasses! Vanessa- you stayed calm and supportive, Jean- you were wonderful.  I have great respect for all the foster parents, adoptive parents, and agency staff that I met there.  I hope we get together again under healthier circumstances!  

So with two conferences to go this season, I am hoping I have used up all the disasters and bad luck and that all will be smooth.  Conferences are the lifeline that connects foster parents, giving them an energy boost of ideas, the chance to commiserate and connect, and a group of peers that understand their lives.  Like an oil change keeps a car motor running smoothly and more efficiently, the info and connections from conferences, workshops and seminars keep foster parents and adoptive parents working with their children more smoothly and more efficiently.  Happy engines, happy hearts, happy homes.

School Bell: Library Time

Spring weather and approaching summer vacation combine to make this a great time to get your kids visiting your local town library.  Libraries have changed a lot over the last few decades.  Books on cassette tape and videos were the beginning.  Students, seniors, and those on tight budgets often rely on libraries for access to computers, the internet and expensive magazines.

If you haven't been there for a while you may be very surprised to see a more vibrant, active, bustling place than you remember. Many libraries have added lots of new exciting things:

-- downloadable audio books
-- computer games
-- extensive DVD collections
-- day long admission passes to local children's museums, aquariums, and more
--even electronic book readers to sign out!

There are often read aloud mornings, and lots of summer programs to bring kids in and get them excited.

  So....get your kiddos over to the area libraries and see what they have to offer.  Sign up for a family library card. See what will be available for special summer reading programs.  And remember that the librarians are in a great position to recommend books for almost any age, any interest.  Get your kids interested and involved and eager now and your summer will be much easier!

Image credits: sesdweb.net, academics.tctc.edu, techdigest.tv

Caring Heart: A Mother's Heart

Despite all my warnings on Tuesday, there is something very magical about being a foster, kinship, or adoptive, or birth mother on Mother's Day. The typical heart decorating cards and flowers and candy boxes is a deep red, solid heart like a child's simply drawn heart. But that is not the kind of loving heart I want to celebrate today.  I want to celebrate a much deeper, more confusing, more complicated, but wonderful loving heart. The heart represented by this illustration:

When I was writing my book of meditations I knew right away that I wanted a heart on the cover... a caring heart.  But, how does one show a caring heart?  I considered filling it with examples of caring... hugs, holding hands, helping with homework, reading a story, putting a bandaid on a knee... an assortment of those images.  Instead, I decided to be more abstract.  In talking with the artist who designed my "caring heart" illustration I said I wanted the heart to be complex, to have confusion, twists, turns, rough edges and smooth, prickly parts, corners, and overlapping sensations all encased in loved.  I was delighted with her final design, shown here [and on all of my Sunday Caring Heart posts].

For me it captures wonderfully the turbulence, complexity, bubbling nature of the complicated love of a foster, kinship, and adoptive parent.... not to mention the complicated love of birth parents too!  It also shows the way that parents can love each child not less or more than another, but each for his or herself, individually, differently, deeply.  I am very proud of this Caring Heart illustration... [the creation of one of my daughters, Anna].  And, on this Mother's Day and every day I take a moment to say how much I love each of my children..... birth,  foster,   kinship,   and adoptive.  Each of you... individually, differently,  complexly, and oh so very deeply.    

Artwork by Anna Parker David from the book cover for "The Caring Heart Speaks: Meditations for foster, kinship, and adoptive parents" by Gail Underwood Parker