When Helping May Not Be So Helpful

I grew up always being the idealistic one in my family.  And every now and then, I would suddenly have a light-bulb moment.  Whenever a creative idea comes to mind, I literally feel the passion surge through my veins as I turn into hyper-focus mode and day dream about it, analyze through it, and research on it.  As a young child, however, moments like these were often met with suggestions that would make me feel that I was either too young or lacked the skill or experience to realize these dreams.

As I was driving on my way to pick up Tweetie Pie from school today, I thought about how I spent so much of my life shying away from the process of fulfilling such dreams because I felt so small against what seemed to me were the giant obstacles I needed to hurdle.

Suddenly, I remembered a book that I loved to read to TP when she was a little girl:  The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss.  It's about a little boy who planted a carrot seed but was consistently warned by his family that the plant wouldn't grow.  Despite all they said, he continued to water the plant everyday and pull up the weeds around it -- until one day, the plant did grow just the way he always believed it would.

I read this book a hundred times before upon TP's repetitive request.  But somehow, it was only today that it came back to me with new meaning:  This book is about a boy so small and yet had a big dream. He started working on it all with just a tiny seed and patiently nurtured it day by day by day, not letting anyone or anything intimidate him.

My little Tweetie Pie looooooves doing art.  Every single day, we have many drawings and paintings to sort and pack away.  Over a  month ago, a student in her school organized an Ecology Art Contest.  For the lower school (Prep to Grade 2), students who wanted to participate in the contest were asked to submit an artwork that expressed how they can help save the earth.

When I saw the announcement, I immediately thought about how TP would definitely want to participate in this contest.  True enough, she came down from her classroom excitedly telling me about the announcement the students made in their classroom about it, followed immediately with the words, "I want to join!"

I immediately replied, "Sure, why not?" with my big, encouraging smile and hug.... And yet there was this other part of me that worried about her entry not being good enough. (Shame on me.)

And just like the little girl that I was, my dear TP immediately proceeded to work on her entry as soon as we got home that day.  Not long after, she came back to me with her work of art saying, "Done!"

This is the artwork that she submitted.

I looked at her work and loved the creative concept of putting all her DOs and DON'Ts inside the planet earth!  But I have to admit that the Claire Dunphy in me who could not understand what she drew inside that planet was soooo tempted to make suggestions (okay, maybe I mean to help!) and improve on it.  Although it took quite an internal struggle for me, I bit my lip and held back on helping her since, after all, it would maker her much more proud of herself to be able to say she did it all on her own.

Today, I arrived at her school and met an excited Tweetie Pie who was proudly declaring, "Mama!  I won 2nd prize in the contest!!!" 

Boy, am I glad that I shushed that micromanaging mom in me!  Now TP can truly be proud because she did it all by herself.  At the end of it all, it really isn't about whether or not she wins anything....  It's really about how much of her own best effort she put into it and can say that she gave her work all she could.

My prayer is that my children will grow up believing in their dreams and doing whatever it takes to turn it to reality, undaunted by obstacles that come their way -- just like that little boy who planted a carrot seed.

Sharing Lent with the Kids

Painting of Jesus by TP's favorite artist, Akiane

It's Lent again...

Every year for the past 3 or 4 years, there are three things I love to do with my Tweetie Pie to make the meaning of Christ's death and resurrection more accessible and understandable for her:

1) Watch (or read) The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe (either the Chronicles of Narnia movie or the old '70s cartoon movie which I also love),

2)  Go to Chruch Simplified's The Walkway in Bonifacio High Street. (I hope they still have it this year.)  TP enjoys participating in the activities there that really help her to put her own reflections into the concrete.

and

3) Read The Amazing Journey by Susie Poole.  I absolutely love how this book explains how Jesus changed the commandments when He came!

This year, dear hubby and I shared with her what we were giving up for the Lenten season (gulp! night time munching, including my favorite dark chocolates!).  She decided to join in as well and gave up all screen time (TV, iPad, Internet, except if we decide to watch a movie as a family) for the entire 40 days.

Today, Tweetie Pie and I have a date after school.  She always looks forward to these dates where I take her to art galleries or work on some arts & crafts activity.  I think today, we will go somewhere nice (open space with nature) and have some "Lenten art reflection" time.

I look forward to doing these with sweet little Bon-Bon as well as he grows older :)

What do you guys do with your kids?  Would love to learn from your ideas, too! :)

Mirror, Mirror On The Wall

Have you ever had those days where anything that can go wrong will go wrong?  And just when you're trying to rush something and accomplish so much, that is also exactly the time when at least one of your children will be more clingy, have accidents, and need your attention?

http://www.allfacebook.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/moods.jpg

I'm a panic parent.  If my husband and I were to be compared to natural elements, I would be fire and he would be water.  If you know me, you'll notice how my voice can go from shrieky high to big and low in all in one sentence when I'm animatedly telling you a story.  When I'm happy, I'm up in the clouds and when I'm sad, I'm completely down in the dump.  So on days that I feel I have to meet a deadline (or even just a perceived expectation), I can hyperfocus on it and panic when things don't go smoothly.

And it is during these days that I seem to hear from my dear Tweetie Pie and darling Bon-Bon things like:

"Milka-milka!" [This is Bon-Bon's cue for wanting to breastfeed.] 

[BANG! Something falls to the floor.]  "Heeeeeeelp!"

"Mamaaaaaa!" followed by "Waaaaahhhh," with a cry that will break your heart.

Haaaayyy...

And yet when I do take a moment to pause and take a step back to calmly look at the whole picture, that's when I realize how much children really pick up from our moods.

It's exactly because I'm stressed that my children also become stressed and often feel the need for assurance. It's also the same reason why a new breastfeeding mom who is worried about her milk supply has trouble latching on and getting her baby to relax and be calm.  It's exactly the reason why we can't fight or argue in front of our children.

When the kids are having an off day, more often than not, I don't really need to look far for answers.  Our children often reflect back to us what they sense from us.

Okay, I need to take a deep breath, slowly exhale, take a moment to pray, and face the day's concerns with a calm and positive attitude -- so that my Tweetie Pie and Bon-Bon can also face life with the right attitude!

Overcoming Her Greatest Fear: The New Baby

Our dear Tweetie Pie was already four years old when we finally decided we were ready to have a second child.  Not long after, we got a positive result and excitedly told our family the wonderful news.  TP was thrilled!  She was finally going to be a big sister.  After all, it was exactly what she was praying for.

I knew in my heart that despite her eagerness, the arrival of a new baby was going to be a big adjustment for her.  And since TP loved to read, we wasted no time in getting her books that helped her prepare for this new chapter of our lives.  We also talked to her a lot about how we took care of her when she was a baby -- how I would practically breastfeed her all day and carry her in a sling with me everywhere I went.  We even showed her videos of when she was a baby.

Since we had to have a scheduled C-section (due to my previous complicated delivery), I felt that the definite countdown made it easier for us to help TP emotionally prepare for the big day.

All the books TP had talked about what to expect when the baby comes -- how Mommy will need time to feed the baby, how the baby will cry often and need changing, and even how she may possibly feel during these times.  They helped TP get a glimpse of what it would be like to be big sister.

I felt though that there was something else we needed to do...

When I was in high school, I chanced upon a documentary that featured a values formation program created for inmates of a particular juvenile delinquency prison.  The goal of the program was to teach these lost young ones how to identify and express their emotions, whether good or bad.  A study showed that these children often grow up resorting to aggression when they are unable to express or communicate their emotions -- especially those of anger or pain.  It all made perfect sense -- and somehow, this revelation stuck with me through the years.  After all, we always feel much better after being able to express whatever is bothering us, right?

Less than two months prior to my delivery, TP suddenly started developing these fears that she never had before.  She began to be afraid of opening her favorite books because she couldn't bear to look at the pictures of the villains or seeing creatures that bared their sharp teeth.  "It's probably just a phase," we thought. "It happens a lot at this age."  We simply took her lead and avoided reading the books that she made her uncomfortable.

As I entered my ninth month, we were able to finalize the date for our C-section.  Excited about this, I told our Tweetie Pie all about the confirmed date.  It was going to be a clear countdown to the most exciting day!

That very afternoon, as I spent time with TP reading books in her room, I noticed that her fears significantly escalated.  The mere sight of the spine of the book in the shelf would make her nervous and uneasy.  My first reaction inside myself was to get frustrated and wish that she could see how unreal all these fears were.  Besides, they're just pictures of fictional creatures, aren't they?

But who am I to say that what she felt was wrong?

As a response to this, I proposed that we put all these "scary" books in a special "Put-Away Drawer," that came with a hidden lock.  I wanted her to know that I completely respected her feelings.  To get things into the "Put-Away" drawer, all she had to do was to tell me what she wanted hidden away and I would take charge of keeping them myself.  One by one, she began naming all these books.  It alarmed me how many books she had chosen to put away.  Some of them didn't even seem scary at all.

As I was collecting all her chosen books, she suddenly said, "Too bad we can't put the baby in the Put-Away Drawer."

Gasp!  Only then did it dawn on me where all her fears were coming from!  It sounds like a mean thing to even imagine.  But to me, it wasn't about her wanting to hurt our baby.  It was about her being afraid of how life would change when our baby boy arrived.

Realizing that this may have something to do with the announcement of the confirmed delivery date, I asked her, "Sweetheart, are you scared of the baby coming?"  She confirmed with a nod.  And even though I knew the answer, I still asked her, "What is it about the baby's coming that scares you most?"  I knew that letting her talk about her feelings would help her.  She replied, "I'm afraid that you won't be there for me anymore."

Being an only-child for all the four years of her life, I was there to make her feel safe and secure.  And now, here she was, terrified that I would no longer be around to protect her.

It was then that I decided to create a special diary for my dear TP.  I bought a large sketchbook and covered it with a special sparkling wrapper in her favorite color and decorated it with her name.  From then on, this was to be her special journal where she could write or draw ANYTHING she felt that day.  I said to her, "There is no right or wrong feeling.  If you're having a bad day and you feel sad or angry -- at anything or even anyone including Papa, Mama, or the baby -- you can write about it there."  She loooved the idea right away.

Soon enough, the baby came.  We were all thrilled!  TP decided her personal nickname for him would be "Bon-Bon" because he was as round as the sweet treat she named him after.  For me and my dear hubby, it was quite an adjustment attending to two kids, instead of just one.  With my determination to breastfeed and cuddle Bon-Bon as much as I did with TP, things were definitely quite hectic.  It was a lot for TP to take in, for sure.

I made it a point that my dear Tweetie Pie would have some time for herself to just sit quietly and record whatever she felt that day in her journal.  Some days, her entry would be about how great the day was. On other days, it would be about how she felt that Bon-Bon was getting all the attention.

Whatever she wrote, I would hug her right after and let her know that it was wonderful that she was able to express how she felt.

By the time Bon-Bon was about 3 months old, TP started looking for some of the books we kept in the Put-Away Drawer.  As the days went by, those books were coming back to their original shelves bit by bit....  Until one day, our little Tweetie Pie was all proud of herself upon realizing the drawer was completely empty.


Since then, we haven't really been wondering about how to deal with sibling rivalry.  In fact, we've been wondering how to teach our dear Tweetie Pie to hold back on smothering her baby brother and loving him to pieces!

Perfect Parenting?

I have a bright and bubbly six-year-old daughter whom I love to call Tweetie Pie (TP).  Her mind is constantly creating ideas on arts and crafts projects, stories to publish, and play scripts to put to life.  It's like she has, what I would call, a "light-bulb moment" almost every five to ten minutes.  It's wonderful to see how she could come up with so many wonderful ideas.  The challenge though with having such a speedy, creative mind is that one also tends to expect the implementation of these ideas to catch up with one's thoughts at the same speed.

My little TP sees a vision in her mind, quickly acts on it, and expects to have perfect results after giving it just one shot.  At the end, when she sees that what she produced turned out to be a far cry from what she envisioned, she breaks down and cries -- so much so that she will end up resigning to the idea that she is terrible at such a task and give it up altogether.

One concrete example that happened recently is when she was inspired to draw a picture of a room with a flower by the window sill and a chair beside it.  She drew something similar to this:

To our surprise, she suddenly broke down, cried, and started kicking on the floor because "it doesn't look like a chair!  I can't get it to look realistic!"

Why?  What could cause her to be so hard on herself?  This is something I have asked myself as we struggled with this concern, particularly the past two years.  However, I didn't really have to go far to find the answer to this.  The answer lies in me...

As I look into my own life, I realize that I myself have given up too easily on acting on my ideas because of immediate and high expectations I put on myself and being afraid to fail in meeting them.  Perhaps my little TP got this from me through my genes.  Perhaps she picked it up from my not-so-positive outlook in life and from the way I respond to her.

Whether it's by nature or nurture, my earnest hope is that my TP will continue to value her ideas and explore them.  But even beyond that, my hope is that she will patiently and persistently work out her plan and be forgiving of herself when she fails and love herself enough to pick herself up, learn, and try again.

The only way I can teach her to do this is to do the same for myself.  We parents can only be effective as teachers of our children when we truly live out the values we wish to impart to them.

That night, when she broke down over her "failed" drawing of a chair, I initially dealt with the situation the way I always did -- by simply telling her how she shouldn't be so hard on herself and that she shouldn't be afraid to make mistakes. And since I had repeatedly done this for several months already, it had grown to a point that she could sense the frustration in my tone of voice.  But that's exactly all I would do -- just tell her -- and then go back to whatever I was doing.  I expected her to just be able to "get it" by listening to my explanation and then move on.

It suddenly dawned on me: How can I expect her to be patient and forgiving to herself if she can't feel her own parents being patient and forgiving towards her?

And so for a change, I stopped what I was doing and cuddled her in my arms to calm her down.  Then I went to her room to get her own little wooden chair and placed it in front of her.  I patiently went through every part of the chair, line by line,  corner by corner, to help her observe and figure out how to translate this 3-D object into a two dimensional drawing.  Every now and then, she had to erase and repeat certain lines -- and I made it a point to be patient and let her know that it was absolutely okay and that she could try again.  Finally, with only my verbal guidance but with my constant presence beside her, she was able to come out with this:

It was such a joy to see her so proud of herself.  Proud, not because she was some naturally gifted artist who did a great drawing -- but because she gave herself time to work on it, erase when not, right, and try again and again and again until she finished.  Aaahhh...  THIS is what our children should be learning.

It's not about how wonderful or perfect their work is but how much heart and effort they put into it.  THAT's what I want my TP to learn.  And that means THAT is also what I must learn....

Recently, TP suddenly asked me, "Mama, what's your New Year's resolution this year as a parent?"

Gulp.  Say what? (Darling TP always comes up with such surprising questions!)  I actually began year 2012 without any specific resolutions.

But suddenly it came to me so clearly that I replied to my her:

"My New Year's resolution is to be patient, persistent, forgiving, and loving to you
[and to myself!] 

so that you may also grow up to be patient, persistent, forgiving, and loving to yourself."

Living The Dream

     We all have big hopes and dreams for our future when we’re young.  Back in high school, I remember clearly telling my classmates I would never choose to be “just” a housewife.  Yet as the time came for us to apply for college, I had no idea what course I wanted and what career I’d definitely pursue for the rest of my life.  In the end, I decided, “I will be a research analyst who will be respected in the financial world.”  It was a career I knew my parents would be proud of.

 
     Little did I realize then that it was not what I really wanted for myself.  I graduated college with hardly any passion for my course at all and slowly seeking other facets of who I was.  With my degree in Applied Economics (dropping my double major on Finance), I chose to be – to the surprise of many – a full-time mission worker instead.  Something in me has always longed to help shepherd and mentor people.

 
      And even with the heart of a mission worker, I dreamed big.  I sought to have some way to go into business and still be a source of light to people who would work for me.  I had this perception that my parents would be proud if I went into business.  Going into social entrepreneurship would allow me to do that and still fulfill my dream of making a difference in the world.  

 
     I shifted to the corporate world and worked as a merchandiser in the hope of learning more about the retail industry and eventually, setting up my own social enterprise.  In 2001, I was where I thought I wanted to be:  learning a lot from a stable merchandising job, active in a spiritual community, going out of dates, keeping fit, and spending time with my family.  Life was just the way I thought it should be.  

 
    Then, I discovered I had breast cancer.  I learned quickly that I needed a mastectomy and chemotherapy.  I was to lose a breast, shed off most of my hair, and deal with days of needle-pricking, unbearable nausea, weakness, and some months of emotional turmoil from the discomfort I’d be feeling.  

 
     I knew God had other plans for me.  The direction of the wind completely changed.  I had to let go and let God steer the boat of my life.  As my mom said, “It’s like you get on a roller coaster and you relax, let go of the handles, and let God take you on the ride of your life.”  Little did I realize that those changes were happening so quickly.

 
     Just one day after I got out of the hospital following my mastectomy, the man I had been dating comes to my house to tell me how much he loved me – that instead of finding himself veer away from me, with the knowledge of my cancer, he found himself all the more wanting to be with me on my difficult journey.  It didn’t matter to him that undergoing chemo meant a possibility of infertility.  It didn’t matter to him that my body had been altered to missing form and that I’d lose all my hair.  God used cancer to affirm the genuine love that was growing between us. 

 
     Through cancer too, my priorities in life changed.  It’s amazing what a terrible disease can do to you.  You begin to see what is truly essential in life and chisel away the things you can really live without.  I left my job to rest and reflect on where God was leading me next.  This was the beginning of my introspective search for what is truly meaningful in my life.

 
     It may seem like God took away so much from me when I was stricken with breast cancer.  But I gained so much more than that.

     Over eight years ago, I had no idea what the rest of my life would be like.  Would I still ever get married?  Would I be able to have my own children at all?  Would I still have that chance to say that I have made my contribution to help make this world a better place before I die?

     And yet… 

Today, I am cancer survivor free of any traces of the disease.
Today, I am married to wonderfully good man who shares my values in life.
Today, we not only have one, but two beautiful children – a loving, bright, and cheerful girl who will be turning five in a few months AND an adorable, healthy newborn baby boy.

     Despite the physical challenge caused by the mastectomy, I was able to breastfeed our daughter for three years and eight months.  And now our newborn son is also getting the best nourishment from nature’s best milk.

     For years I had hopes of being able to say I’m able to do something important.  I thought I had to be out there, in the limelight somehow, to be able to say that I am making a contribution to the world.  Now, I am what I once would have looked down on as “just a housewife.”

      I am a stay-at-home mom by choice – this is where I am meant to be right now while our children are in their most crucial, formative years.

      I embark on a journey of discovering how we can best help our children grow in physical, emotional, and spiritual health, that they may have the confidence to discover their gifts and pursue their desires that God has planted deep within their hearts.