Motherwise Cracks

The kids are back to work or college, the Saints beat the Patriots and a light coating of snow has fallen across the land  for the first time this winter.

Last night we went to help put up my daughter’s outdoor Christmas lights so at least I saw one of the kids to help get me from a full, noisy and happy household to my new normal, which is the dog looking at me and furnace coming on to break the sounds of silence.

But not to fret. I do still get to do “Mom Cheerleading ” though, which makes it all better. “Mom Cheerleading” is when you are called on to pump up a child after they have had a bad day, bad experience, bad test, bad whatever. It is challenging to do over the phone but I have become quite good at it. Mom cheerleaders have to break it down into three parts. (No pom poms are needed and thankfully, no little outfits as I wouldn’t look good at all.)

The first part is listening. You listen and provide feedback to make sure that you understand the issue. This can take some time, but not because you are slow to understand. No. This is because usually the party involved gets satisfaction from repeating the same thing multiple times.

The second is probing for solutions. You can offer two or three and go over the pros and cons. It is delightful when the other person comes up with their own but you at least need to throw up something to get the brainstorming process started.

The third is fun. After you have listened and decided on the proper action, you can top it all off with some pumping up of all the good qualities of your child and (this is the REALLY fun part) and how awful the other party/institution/place of employment/etc. was to do such a thing. They kids really love this part. It does require one last warning to be polite as this has a tendency to make a person feel a but too much “in the right” and can tempt them to do wrong, so be careful. It’s a balancing act. Like most of life.

I learned how to balance very well. A couple good falls a week over a period of years will do that do you.

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“A good balance of winning and losing is important. If you just win all the time, you won’t get anything out of it; having some tough losses can be really important.”  ~ Andrew Shue