There was a lot to dislike about my former therapist. I could criticize things she said and did for hours. But even a broken clock is right twice a day. Once I said something to her about how much little self esteem I had. She laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed. She told me that I have some of the highest self esteem of anyone she has ever met. Maybe she is right.

I like me. I like that I continue learning things and growing. I don’t change exactly, but I do adapt and take on new characteristics and personality traits and language that will better suit my needs and desires. I am an intensely hard worker–to the point that it becomes somewhat problematic and one of the big things I need to focus on over the next decade is actually taking rest breaks. I feel intense pride in the things I am capable of doing.

I think one of the reasons that I don’t want someone else to clean my house is that when you pay someone to do something for you… you have to accept how they do it. I had a conversation with a buddy years ago, her child was being potty trained in preschool. She didn’t like how it was being done but she told me, “I have to accept that when you are paying someone to do something you have to let them do it how they see fit.” In a nutshell that is why I am so intensely happy about how I have parented my children.

My children are adaptable, plucky, emotionally aware, capable of managing their own feelings in a variety of healthy ways, physically fit, and very self confident about their ability to get shit done.

A buddy asked me if I am going. to continue to supplement with curriculum since Scottish schools are not that academically intense. I just about laughed my ass off. Fuck no. But I am going to continue to parent and my way of parenting is incredibly hands on and intense. This morning after breakfast I had my kids get notebooks and pencils. I told them to write down everything they would like to buy between now and January. Guesstimate how much these things are going to cost you. Put them in a priority list. Then go count how much money you have left from setting up your rooms and getting settled for school. So. Do you feel confident you will be able to do everything you want to do? How much money are you going to put into long term savings? What sorts of things do you want to be able to do when you turn 18? How many of those things do you incorrectly assume I will just fund for you?

The kids grimaced a bit. One child is much further towards these goals than the other. But that kid didn’t have to buy their own bed which has put a serious dent in the other child’s budgeting.

I asked the kids if they have been making forward progress towards these goals lately. The kids just about exploded with frustration. NO I HAVEN’T MADE PROGRESS BECAUSE EVEN THOUGH I HAVE BEEN DOING THE FRIGGIN WORK I HAVEN’T BEEN TRACKING IT SO I HAVEN’T BEEN GETTING PAID. 

Life lesson, kid. You are now in school. If you do 100% of your homework but you don’t turn it in… you get a 0 on the assignment. If you do all of your work for your job but you don’t give it to your boss… you get 0 money. You may not be doing everything my lazy heart secretly wishes you were doing around the house, but you have been working. You have both been getting a lot done.

How much money have you made?

Yeah. Not much. Doesn’t that suck?

Ok. The last two methods of tracking chores we have been trying have failed. Let’s try a new way. I broke down every single chore that can be done into tiny little pieces and I wrote every piece on a popsicle stick. On the back of the stick I wrote how much you get paid for doing it. The kids rescued buckets out of the recycling and wrote their names on them. The to-be-done chores are in the yellow plastic tub. Once you do something, drop it in your cup. That is easier than having to remember to track things in your day planner. Maybe you need more scaffolding at this stage and that’s reasonable. But you have to move your sticks. I won’t do it. I’m thrilled when you want to do a bunch of work for me and I don’t even have to pay you for it. Makes my life more simple. But you have things you want.

Let’s talk about the flow of our day. School really is going to change how you use your energy. How will you learn to get little bits of chores done in the middle of your time? We wake up super early because if we don’t have some awake time before breakfast we don’t eat enough and then our energy depletes partway through the day. So the kids wake up at 6am even though we don’t eat that early. Do you really need to spend all of the time when your parents are making breakfast sitting on a chair watching us? A lot of the chores are little and can be done in five or ten minutes. Could you do one or two before breakfast? If we finish breakfast with over an hour left before we have to start walking could you do another small chore then? When you get home from school, could you set an alarm FOR YOURSELF I AM NOT DOING IT so you read and relax for 30-60 minutes and then you get up and do a few chores before dinner?

Your life is never going to stop being work.  (Because we unfortunately live in a civilized society--a more civilized [in the best of ways] one than we left by a large margin.) It’s going to increase pretty much until you are old and then you will still have work, but it might be less as your body degrades and you have less functionality so managing your time and energy will be even more important.

Life is hard. Life is work. I am not covering for you. I am not going to allow you to think that you sitting around all the time while a more-poor-than-you person comes and cleans your house is a fair trade.

I mean, I am not opposed to people making money by cleaning houses. I have done it.

But my children are not going to expect it. Fuck. No.

They don’t need to. They are highly competent little people. They are skilled at a wide range of types of labor. Do they drive me nuts sometimes? Of course. They are human beings. Do I worry and have a lot of anxiety about how they are going to turn out? Of course. I was diagnosed with General Anxiety Disorder long before I had children. If anything I am more serene about this process than anyone could have expected.

It truly helps that my children knock my socks off on a regular basis. Am I hard on them? Yeah. Am I demanding? Yeah. Would they be this awesome if I were less of a hard ass? I don’t know. I know that my children are some of the only people on this planet I genuinely try to emulate. They have internalized the lessons I try to teach. I fake it while they are the things I want to be. Are they perfect? Fuck no. That’s part of what makes the so amazing. They fuck up and get up and try again. They learn from their mistakes. They can narrate, “I tried x and it went really poorly. I think that next time I will try y because that way I am correcting for x mistake but I think it still may not work and I will have to try z.”

I periodically make sure people who have lots of training and experience evaluate my children. The results are always glowing. I am not the only one impressed by my children. Are they perfect? Fuck no. I probably couldn’t bear to live with them if they were. They are perfectly imperfect. They are sassy and tenacious and opinionated. I am here for it.

I love that my children have internalized that our house is supposed to be a theatre backdrop. They have a mother who took set design classes and it shows. I love that the way they look at the world is formed around how to  improve and refine the things that are already there. They want to change things and inspire themselves and others to not stay the same.

I like my children so very much I feel I could burst. Someday they will go out into the world and I can’t wait to see what they do with their lives. This is why I must work on resting more, so I can be around to see it.

I like me. I want to see what I do over the next few decades. I like Noah. I want to see what he is going to do.

I like that when I feel put down my response is to start listing off in my head all of the ways and reasons I like myself. It doesn’t matter if anyone else likes or approves of me. It doesn’t matter if someone else tells me I am broken.

I am broken open with all the kinetic energy of a newly born store. I can work with that.