Let’s talk turkey about being a stay-at-home parent, shall we? It’s not quite so glamorous as those 1950s television shows led me to believe. Okay, nothing led me to believe staying at home as an unschooling homeschooling mom would be glamorous. Even so, it’s not a stretch to admit there are days when my mind might wander away from the day-to-day chores and To Dos to more adventurous opportunities as I clear off a table or fold a load of laundry. That’s not to say, of course, that similar things didn’t happen in my Walter-Mitty mind when I worked in a cubicle when I went out to a job every day (and still had to do laundry or make dinner or do dishes).
Truly, being at home and having the opportunity to unschool my teenagers is a far better deal. Even so, it has taken us a few trial and error times to uncover an at-home rhythm; to be honest, I’m not convinced we’re quite there, but we continue to tweak the days. One of the recent adjustments we’ve made recently is subtle, but it reminds me daily that we are indeed moving in the right direction. We are finding our rhythm and routines in that slow and steady way that allowed the tortoise to beat the rabbit, and I’ll take it, thank you!
These days, when I head into the kitchen to begin our breakfast routine, my 16-year-old accompanies me. Why? Because she has claimed emptying the dishwasher as her domain. I love that the other day she said her autistic brain loves the opportunity to organize things, in this case all the clean utensils, glassware, dishes, and pans. Part of this process includes her setting out the daily-used wares on the stove and table. In a previous post, I talked about my difficulty asking for or, even more, accepting help around the house. This particular task has become a non-negotiable as far as my oldest teen is concerned; she insists it is her task to complete.
And so I let her.
And I love it. I love not having to think about it or include it in my own breakfast and kitchen chores. In fact, I enjoy the small-kitchen-not-big-enough-for-too-many-people dance we do with one another as she puts things where they belong and I begin cooking a few of the breakfast foods, like sausages and bacon and hash browns. We have explored similar options mostly in fits and starts—having them preheat the oven or get the double boiler going for the chocolate, put the waffles in the oven and setting the timer. There was even a time when my oldest made my coffee for me. At times, my younger teen was my sous chef and helped with making waffle batter, biscuits, and sometimes scrambled eggs.
Mostly, these have not stuck not for any single reason. And I do not begrudge that for a moment. I remind both of our teenagers when they lament how little they think they do compared to their neurotypical peers (which tends to be expressed in a logic fallacy they now recognize as everyone my age) that we have had other things to focus on in our lives, not the least of which is their mental health and emotional regulation. Believe me, navigating a neurotypical world as an autistic person requires some incredible skill and my girls have developed that skill in spades.
I think as parents we can lose sight of where we are on the journey, the big-picture journey versus the can-I-get-my-teen-to-put-a-bowl-in-the-dishwasher journey. I’m not saying I don’t want my teens to learn the basics around the house. But those are the “easier” things for me to work on with them; these chore-based skills are ones they don’t always see they are already doing. Again, do we have some tweaking to do still? Absolutely. But when I step back and let myself see what they are already doing, in emotional and mental health growth as well as in completing chores, I see so much more of that bigger picture of raising amazing adults versus chore-completing robots.
Really, it’s about what you choose to focus on and what you choose to see. What is it that matters to me as a parent? When I was getting married, a friend of mine and I talked about the price tags associated with three specific areas of wedding planning: the engagement ring, the wedding & reception, and the honeymoon. We agreed that most folks cannot afford to spend equal amounts on all three areas and the bride and groom have to choose what’s important to them and where they want to invest the bulk of their wedding budget.
To me, parenting works similarly. Parents have to determine what matters to them and where they want to invest the bulk of their time and energy over the course of their parenting journey. It will all eventually get time and attention, but we get to determine the order of and the effort applied at any given moment. Much of the time, that will involve tweaking and trial and error. It will involve stepping back and reassessing. And it most definitely will involve choosing to celebrate the slow and steady progress and loving one another through the successes as well as the failures (theirs and mine).