Category: parenting

Annual Reflections

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Last year as I was writing my reflections on the year that just went past, I felt totally exhausted, morally and physically. You can probably read it between the lines in the post. As I was planning to write this post (and I’ve been meaning to do it for at least two weeks), I was thinking that this year I have been in a much better place mentally but it’s probably the present moment that feels more manageable, not the whole year.

It was a year of ups and downs. I changed jobs again, joining yet another tech company, I went to Vegas for the company kick-off then to Singapore for onboarding, doing more travel and time away from home that I’ve had in a while. I was reluctant to go and yet both trips rejuvenated me despite the jet lag and packed schedules. It felts like I rediscovered myself again outside my role as a mother. I was drunk on all the conversations I had with new and familiar people and my whole self felt suddenly much more interesting and deep than I’ve felt for a very long time. Then an inevitable hangover happened as I had to readjust back to the life where nothing really is about me or my needs, it’s all about the children and wider family, the customers and management at work.

I’ve grappled with questions about my own identity for a while. To some extent it seems like an inevitable part of becoming a parent and adjusting to the change in lifestyle (it’s only been 8 years). I am also an immigrant (speaking with an accent), an introvert (who needs time alone to feel normal), I enjoy reading some difficult texts (who I have no one to discuss with). I tend to dwell on things and struggle to stop when too much thinking ceases to bring any new insights and becomes a pointless and disquieting loop in my head. I’ve always longed to do something out of the ordinary, something to lift me up from the everyday existence, not because I don’t like or appreciate that existence but because that elevation lights me up inside. I sometimes feel truly alive while researching a topic or while writing. I chased the same high while sailing. Sometimes I feel it as I spend time with my children. It’s a combination of awe and being truly present in the world. And while there is some time and space for chasing that feeling even when you have several children and a full time job, it definitely shrinks to the point you have to be extremely determined to still chase that feeling while doing something on top of your responsibilities and I’m afraid I might not have that determination. Where does it leave me? Who am I as a person?

What I realised this year though is that concentrating too much on myself does not help answer that question. In fact, thinking and talking too much about myself leaves me with an emotional hangover. I read a book about chatter after hearing about it on my favourite podcast then read another book after hearing about it on the same podcast and that was extremely helpful to quieten the restless voice in my head. I am not sure I answered the question of who I am but I’ve learned to focus on other things instead.

The children have been flourishing this year – they play with each other much more and it doesn’t always end in tears although they still require an intervention at times, not of a parental referee but a guide who helps resolve arguments without physical force. I. continues to be the most athletic of our girls, easily balancing on her bike and starting to swim without any swimming lessons (the twins are starting their swimming lessons next year, thanks to their grandparents). R. made some progress in gymnastics, made a great friend at school, started going to a dancing class with her friend and had her first dancing concert – it was a great performance which left me strangely emotional. She started riding her bike this year, tying her shoelaces, getting more into maths. She still struggles with writing and I have been deep diving into different approaches to education trying to help her.

W. has much more patience than the other two for listening to books, drawing and doing other quiet activities – finally a stereotypical girl, the only one out of our three. She loves being a little princess and the contrast between her and I., her twin sister who is a total tomboy, is sometimes comical.

This year I probably went to the gym a bit less than I wanted to, not just because of the usual winter sicknesses and commitments but also from fatigue. I tried other approaches to physical activity, too – got into mobility work and explored some combinations of gymnastics and calisthenics. I still feel the best when I regularly go to the gym and do strength training.

We are planning to buy our own place if everything goes well.

What I am hoping for in the new year is payoff for some of the things that I’ve been doing for years now, at work and in personal life. I still don’t feel like I’m getting enough sleep. I still wish I played the piano more, painted more, wrote more. I want to read with the girls more, learn more new things. And I think if I do more of these things I will be more myself, too.

Why so serious?

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R has been going to gymnastics for over a year. She goes to a fairly small club that emphasises fun over competition which is probably the healthiest approach to children’s sport. Yet we almost didn’t rejoin this term, and the main reason was that I didn’t see much improvement in what R was doing. She also often lost interest by the end of the class and instead of practicing she’d do absolute minimum and make faces at me, in her usual monkey manner.

I talked to a few parents while sitting on the bench waiting for R to finish her classes. One girl who used to be friendly with R dropped out after Christmas because her Mum didn’t see results (and it was inconvenient for the whole family to do sports on Saturday morning). A couple of people I knew from my previous jobs brought their kids – and then I didn’t see them anymore. Both of the parents echoed my secret desire to see their kids doing perfect cartwheels and flips when we chatted. I am not sure what happened after – all I know I don’t see them at gymnastics anymore.

In the end, I was talked into continuing by another mother whose daughter has been doing gymnastics with R for a while. I look forward to talking to her every Saturday and that was probably the biggest reason why I signed R up again. That, and R actually telling me she enjoys gymnastics.

By the middle of the term R’s cartwheels suddenly improved. She now pays attention at the end of class. And come to think of it, she’s generally far less clumsy than she used to be.

Somehow she still mostly just enjoys the class, sometimes getting things right, sometimes not. I can imagine myself if I was somehow transported into a child’s body without losing the tendencies of my own age and experience – I would try to get the most value out of each class, do everything just right, constantly increase complexity and compete with myself. In other words, I would probably take all the fun out of it. I’d take it too seriously and get frustrated. I’m pretty stubborn so I as that imaginary child would probably not quit – but I probably wouldn’t get any joy out of it either, too focussed on results.

Needless to say, when I was an actual child I did not have that mindset. I did quit ballet after two years and I didn’t finish music school. The approach towards children education both in sport and in music back in Russia had nothing to do with fun and recreation – you were expected to work hard to get results. And I know that a lot of my enjoyment of music was lost in my childhood because learning music was all hard work and very little fun. Only now, many years later, I allowed myself to play the piano very casually, occasionally, for my own enjoyment – although I suspect if I didn’t have the excuse of having three children, a full time job and too many hobbies, I’d probably start trying to get more serious about improvisations and all the other skills that were not covered in my childhood education, possibly getting to the place when playing the piano is not enjoyable once again.

Yet R who can be pretty resistant to any kind of pressure somehow, almost by magic, managed to acquire skills just by sticking to weekly lessons and not taking them too seriously. Yes, it took a long time – a very long time by the standards of our impatient times. But the big plus is, she’s still enjoying it, too.

I had a dream that my children would do nippers (train to be lifesavers) – who wouldn’t enjoy running around on the beach, training to be safe in the ocean? R, that’s who. She started just before she turned 5 and she hated it then and the next term when we tried again. She hated being last while running, she hated how sand hit her bare legs when it was windy, she was clingy and miserable and so we quit. And a voice in my head told me for years and years that R didn’t enjoy anything all that much and maybe it was worth persisting despite her wishes. I know that voice is not really an enemy, it’s the same voice that urged me to practice reading and writing with R and researching the best ways to learn spelling and maths. Yet in the end what often works best with R is just giving her time and agency to decide how she engages with whatever she’s doing.

And as it often happens in parenting, I am not sure who learns more in all this – the child who acquires a skill of doing cartwheels and writing complex sentences, or the parent who learns to let go sometimes and trust the process and their child. I know I am currently trying to apply whatever I learned in my own life: hold my desires very lightly and don’t take them too seriously, invest time in following my interests and slowly build skills without fixating on it. Maybe one day I’ll be able to do a cartwheel too.