Handstands and Motherhood

It was a fairly typical Monday afternoon. My three boys tumbled off the school bus just before three o’clock, suppressed energy from a structured school day emanating from them like skin sweating an overindulged garlic meal.  They careened wildly into the house, shouting & shedding coats and boots and hats. The peace and serenity of taking care of a curly haired & lashed preschooler was lanced like a carbuncle and the pus-like mayhem was about to begin.

Afterschool snacks were the first order of business. Apple slices & yogurt were initially rejected but then begrudgingly consumed. Unfortunately, being a pediatrician’s offspring really does mean trying to meet that daily goal of five servings of fruits & vegetables per day and four servings of calcium & vitamin D. As my 7 year old would mutter, “A real bummer.”

Orchestrating an independent 4th grader’s homework (his accelerated fifth grade math problems necessitated MY use of a calculator) and then actively participating in a 2nd grader’s reading comprehension worksheets and multiplication flashcards was a sprint towards the extracurricular finish line. Sight words for my kindergartner were drilled. Books were read and the backpacks were repacked. This frantic homework dash is purely self-induced of course. Certainly no one forced me to sign my kids up for a myriad of activities. My daughter did not need to take dance class, gymnastics, a nature class and Taekwondo. My two older boys did not need to add thrice weekly swim team practice on top of their 5 classes per week of Taekwondo. The boys did not need to be musically stimulated with piano lessons.

Be that as it may, I was racing to chauffeur the four kids to 3 different extracurricular activities. I also had to squeeze in a packed home cooked meal for the two older boys while their younger sibs were at Taekwondo. Honestly, there are some foggy days when I just want to swing by Mickey Ds and succumb to the convenience of fried salty processed hamburgers and french fries. However, I have not yet broken down. Most likely this is because of the memory of bumping into a patient family at a McDonalds’ in Breezewood, Pennsylvania (200 miles away on a family trip enroute to Washington DC) and being told by the father, “See, our pediatrician feeds her kids McDonalds so it’s definitely okay!” I didn’t realize that an annual McDonald’s visit made me the pediatrician poster child for fast foods!

Consequently, I was a harried tired mother with insignificant first world problems, all of my own doing. I was feeling fractious and grumpy, like a toddler who had the post-nap crankies. My children were stoking my mental furnace by bounding about the house, gleefully screaming and wrestling like hyenas near the Christmas tree. They blithely ignored my initially patient requests to start getting changed into their Taekwondo uniforms. Instead, they were pushing each other around, wiggling like puppies and leaving messes in their wake that I had tidied up minutes before. And as always, I felt like I was going to lose it. The clock was ticking, the extracurricular activity was awaiting and the kids were oblivious to my ballooning temper. I felt my blood start to simmer and fizz like magma.

As a pediatrician, I am very patient and indulgent of my “kids” in the office. Unfortunately, a lot of the patience seems to dissolve when I parent my own children. My kids know what buttons to push and usually I can manage to remain calm when one or two buttons are detonated. It is when the third or fourth child is caterwauling that my temper overwhelms my composure. I counsel myself on all AAP recommendations regarding the discipline of children. I recognize my own parental vices and have made daily resolutions to be more patient and understanding of these four darling hellions. But more times than not, I don’t always succeed. Today, while the kids were squealing, somersaulting and parachuting about my house, I decided to try another approach. I started practicing ujjayi breathing that I use in hot yoga class and then did a handstand for 60 seconds. Amazingly, afterwards I felt calmer with this inversion and the emerging strident tone in my voice was quelled. Frankly, I was thrilled. I found a new outlet for my daily frustrations of raising four strong-willed  opinionated children.

I have already done three handstands tonight.  But no yelling.

Phyllo dough layered mothers

As a pediatrician, I meet a plethora of mothers who come in and out of my office. Some of these mothers do not work outside the home, but certainly work assiduously inside the home. Some mothers work part-time (2-3-4 days per week) and many mothers juggle full-time jobs with day care drop off, laundry & housecleaning, and the raising of their children.

Regardless of these mothers’ full time or part-time status, I regard each of these mothers in their primary job: to love and nurture their children, to tend to their children’s health and well-being. Our appointments are typically very meaty or hearty – a veritable beef vegetable barley soup to consume in a short 30 minute well-child care exam. Depending upon the age of the infant or child, we discuss diet and nutrition, sleep patterns and snoring, elimination and bedwetting, school performance and developmental milestones, activities and mood. Sometimes I am so focused on making sure my patients and their parents have all their questions addressed and then relaying my anticipatory guidance, that I don’t ever truly get to know these mothers as individuals.

Over the years, I have learned that not only are mothers amazing and patient, kind and giving, anxious and angry, they also have such a rich and interesting life outside of their children. I have met many mothers who are marathon runners, yoga instructors, dancers, champion ice skaters, world travelers. I have met mothers who are physicians, dentists, nurses, police officers, scientists, engineers, teachers, accountants and financial advisers. A mother may appear to be anxious or harried (of course sleep deprivation never helps) but they may also be a CEO running a Fortune 500 Company. Other moms are multi-tasking by launching a creative children’s clothing company. I love to see that many mothers have phyllo dough layers beneath their robe of motherhood!

After the office visit, I am sometimes lucky enough to have a little extra time to spend with these amazing mothers. I love hearing about their experiences outside of their childrens’ lives. What I have learned through the years is that the evolution of a serene and measured mother takes time. More often then not, the infant and toddler years are sacrificed to the physicality of the children’s needs. The grade school years can draw great emotional or mental upheavals. The adolescent years can be entering a different galaxy altogether. Through this time, the most relaxed and collected mothers tend to be the ones who sacrifice immensely and provide unconditional love, but also try to sift through the bedlam and glean a couple of seconds or minutes or even one or two hours for themselves. These mothers may run 5 miles daily or practice yoga or play tennis. They may learn to paint, take piano lessons, go to church alone for quiet reflection, or take an astronomy class. It is so important to keep a little segment of time for oneself, maybe while the kids are taking a nap or learning in preschool or tumbling in gymnastics lessons. It is important to realize that although children should be the Ichiban priority, a mother should never lose sight of her former self before children. A mother will never be the same after welcoming a new baby or child into her life, but that primordial self can now be enhanced and illuminated with maternal love, rather than detained or suppressed. As mothers, we probably all need to learn to be a teeny bit selfish. The 20 minutes of meditation or piano playing or exercise in lieu of a clean house or extra sleep may be all it takes to make us become a happier, healthier, and more temperate mother.

As a working mother, I am still learning to find that daily peace and equilibrium. When I first became a mother, I was immersed in the 120 hour work weeks of my last year of medical residency. I didn’t feel like I could do anything extra for myself and needed to rush home to soak up time with my oldest son. Eight years later, I have noticed a tremendous decrease in my anxiety and frustration with my children when I cut my little slice of personal time and then take a nibble or a bite. Don’t forget to swallow! I often do. I sacrifice sleep and a completely orderly house in lieu of these precious moments. I run, practice yoga, play the piano and of late, I blog!

Misbehaving outside the home

As a pediatrician, I feel more than a little bit of pressure for my four young children to behave outside our home. I certainly understand there are challenging stages of development, emotional lability and stresses that all children will face and all parents will encounter, pediatricians and their kids notwithstanding. However, it still does not dispel my discomfort when one of my children starts misbehaving. And frankly with four children, the possibilities and permutations are pretty much in the favor of misbehavior. I always feel it such a negative testimony to my professional skills and parenting when my children are getting in trouble at school, acting unruly or partaking in an all-out temper tantrum. From my perspective, who in their right mind would want to see a pediatrician whose children are poorly behaved?

On the other hand, being in the midst of temper tantrums, time outs, 123 Magic, behavior charts and school conferences also allows me to relate to my patients’ parents. I truly believe the practice of medicine is partially a science, but mostly an art. There are many ways to approach childhood development, behavior and discipline. Hands-on experience being in the trenches of parenthood can be invaluable to my practice, right?

This is a perfect segue into a portrait of my four spirited and opinionated children. My children have inherited their parents’ strong personalities, so they do come by it honestly. They tend to be the loudest kids in any given setting. For example, while I was waiting outside my two preschoolers’ nature center class last week, I could hear the cacophony of their laughter or complaints. I could hear my 3rd son singing Christmas songs before Thanksgiving and my daughter belting out a “days of the week” ditty. In those instances, I may smile and chalk this all up to their zealous effervescence. Conversely, I may also hear the wailing of my son because he was not able to finish his art project and had such difficulty with transitions. Most parents probably have felt this way sometime in the past, that their children are encountering bumpy tortuous paths while other kids are effortlessly sailing along.

My two older boys are pretty spicy as well. At a birthday party two summers ago, they met and introduced themselves to everyone at the party (adults and children non discriminating), and showed them the contents of their sticky blue ice-cream filled mouths! At another party, my oldest introduced himself to an adult stranger with virtual ease. He enthusiastically chirped, “We four are the McIntyre kids!” He then proceeded to introduce his siblings. Both my grade school boys love to talk, disregard paying attention and following directions in the classroom, and get overexcited and overstimulated easily. I can probably never hope to see an outstanding conduct grade on their report card!

Even though I have the benefit of education and experience to recognize that many prickly childhood behaviors are pesky stages of development that shall pass, it certainly still is just as achey to parent through it. I also feel sympathy for my four children. When they misbehave, they certainly are not exerting any bad intentions. They are children and all children will misbehave. It is actually good to misbehave. In making poor choices, they have the opportunity to learn from past wrongdoings. It is also challenging for my children to be held to a higher standard by myself and possibly the public. Ultimately, I realize it is perfectly fine for children to misbehave. The true reflection of parenting skills is how a parent reacts and responds to such misbehavior.