This post had several working titles including "Mommy's Sorry She Has To Go To Work," and "Your Focus Needs More Focus." Either way, there was some serious working Mom guilt combined with a heavy dose of standard parental frustration going on this week.
Weekday mornings require the usual routine for all parties, including basics like getting dressed, eating breakfast, brushing teeth and getting assorted necessary items for the day in their designated places (lunch box, backpack, shoes, jackets...) My kids have been doing this all their lives, with varying degrees of support depending on their ages at the time. Currently, they are old enough to do it all for themselves. The drill has been practiced over and over and over.
And yet.
Pavlov's dogs perform better than my kids.
Distractions are everywhere. And I'm not talking screens, as we don't allow them in the morning. Physical distractions (oh look, it's a Lego/book/cat/brother/sock -- insert pretty much any given noun.) Mental distractions (staring into space). Emotional distractions (I'm so happy I'm going to skip around and around and around).
Because T eats her food molecule by molecule, a simple bagel can last a lifetime. (Pretty certain she would not survive in the wild.)
Because G cannot move three feet without finding a random Lego to build or a piece of paper from which to make his latest Origami creation.
Because T cannot brush her teeth without getting lost in the vacuum of her mind while staring at the mirror. If I don't disrupt her, she could be rooted there for hours. (I'd love to know what she's thinking, but even she doesn't know.)
Because when I send G upstairs to turn off his bedroom light (for the third time), next thing you know, he has a nose in a book. (Not a bad thing, I know, but a distraction when the school bell will ring in less than five minutes. And school is more than five minutes away.)
You get the picture.
I suspect I am not alone in this quest to figure out how to handle the distraction management with grace and without completely losing my cool.
Which is what happened earlier this week, prompting lashings of working Mom guilt.
It wasn't quite the standard morning. We actually needed to leave the house earlier than usual, as I had an appointment and, since my husband was away on business, my kids had to accompany me. We'd had the pep talk the night before. We agreed that we would cooperate, focus, get it done -- even if it meant eschewing some playtime because our time was more compressed than on a "normal" morning. We even agreed that they could buy lunch at school instead of making their own lunches like they usually do -- a rare "treat."
And yet.
The morning was a complete clusterf**k. In retrospect, I should have seen this coming, prepared ahead logistically and steeled myself emotionally. But, reminder after reminder turned into nag after nag and eventually escalated into yell after yell. It culminated in us running anxiously to the car, all breathless and on the verge of tears. I promptly informed my kids that I was very disappointed in them. They had made me late.
Ugh.
The second the words were out of my mouth, I regretted them. There was shameful, sad silence from the backseat. My beautiful, creative, high-spirited son hoarsely whispered, "We're sorry we made you late again." His sister, the whimsical one, tearfully echoed, "Yes Mama, we're very sorry."
I hate myself.
I'm the one who should be building them up, showing them how to roll with life's challenges, how to "shake it off" or "let it go" (depending on whether you're a Taylor Swift or Frozen fan). Instead, here I was squashing their spirits, trampling over their egos. I'm not setting a worthy example. Instead, I'm mandating that their innate need for creativity, free play and imagination be set aside to accomodate my timelines, my needs. I disgust myself.
And yet.
I have to get to work. So does my husband. As we move through our weekday frenzied mornings, our minds too are elsewhere -- on deadlines, to-dos, on our smartphones and laptops. We, too, are distracted. Emails, texts, news feeds, tweets, calls. For me, as a working Mom, my actual work day starts the second I awake. This is my self-imposed tradeoff for the luxury of not physically getting into the office till 9.40 a.m. (since school drop-off is at 9 a.m..)
It's all rush rush and we are all distracted. No surprise then that it's a formula for stress and disappointment. Often, by the time I make it to my desk, I'm already exhausted.
And yet.
It's not just the mornings; the evenings are similarly compressed and distracted. Shoes and jackets and backpacks are kicked off and discarded. Toys find their way to the dinner table. Unfinished homework needs finishing. Emails need answering (since I left the office at 5.20 p.m. to pick up the kids from their after-school program.) Dishes. Bath time, teeth brushing (cue shenanigans, bickering). Finally, bed and reading before they descend into the peace of slumber. More emails, unfinished work, deadlines to get a head start on. Fishing into their backpacks to discover a form that needs a signature, a party invitation. Who knows how long they might have been there.
My whole day -- outside of time at the workplace -- is spent trying to conquer all of these endless distractions and competing forces. How long can we continue this pace? I wonder. Is there an art to the distraction management that will make it all work better?
Because we could ALL use a little more zen.