Bright spot gone

The bright spot in my summer just got snuffed out. I hadn’t realized how much I had hanging on it until it was gone. I’m disappointed. And really sad.

I’m sad for me. I’m sad for my kids. We are all craving a connection we just aren’t getting. And we won’t be getting it for a long, long time. I had some concentrated connection to look forward to, and it was lighting the way for me. Now everything feels dark.

I’m lonely. I spend all day with my kids (and being with them can be stressful because intense emotional outbursts are still very much the norm and I sometimes feel held hostage to the whims of a kid who has no control over emotional responses), and then all night alone while my husband works. I rarely interact with other adults for more than moments at a time.

My husband is stressed out and has no mental or emotional capacity to support me. I am stressed out and have no mental or emotional capacity to support him. We’re both unhappy and neither has the energy to meet the other where they are at. The bright spot was suppose to diffuse some of this and help us get back to each other. Now we need to muddle through without the break from each other and our daily routine.

The school year has only been over for two weeks. I realize I’m still decompressing from one of the most stressful three months of my life. I’m also ramping up for what is sure to be one of the most stressful academic years of my life. (Speaking to my principal for over an hour today supports this assumption.)

And right now I’m stuck in the middle, in this strange lull that is defined by monotony and stress and loneliness and sadness. This time is not restorative at all. I will be starting in the fall with none of the mental and emotional reserves that usually are at my disposal, when my need for those reserves is greater than ever.

One day at a time. I keep telling myself that. Just get to the evening, go to sleep, wake up again and do it all over. That is where I’m at. It will have to be enough.

When I think of the collective stress and grief that this country is experiencing right now – from the mass unemployment, the loss of livelihoods, the grief of those who have lost loved ones, the fear of state sanctioned actors that are supposed to protect us, (and I recognize my own struggle is minuscule compared to that which most Americans are dealing with), and I think of how egregiously our administration has bungled the response to this crisis, and the subsequent crises, I feel an anger and resentment I’ve never experienced before. The rest of the world looks at us with pity and disbelief as more people die here than any other country (we make up 4% of the world’s population but account for 25% coronavirus deaths). It’s shameful what is happening in this country. I have been ashamed of being American many times in my adult life but right now I’m overwhelmed with disdain. I don’t understand how we could have ended up here. I don’t see how we can make it out of this intact.

One day at a time. It’s the only thing to cling on to.

Taking advantage of this summer: chores

I think one of the things stressing me out right now is this feeling that I should take advantage of this summer to instill some productive habits into myself and my kids. It’s so easy, when we have camp to get to and trips to take, to let the summer fly by without changing much about how we go about our days. But this summer we are home. And I am around. And I feel like I should take advantage of that.

My kids don’t really do any chores. They clean up their rooms about once a week (with our help), but that is about it. I REALLY want to add some chores into our daily routine so that they see themselves as contributing members of our household (and so they actually do some of the stuff that otherwise I would do!)

So far my attempts have been a disaster. This is probably because I am horrible at doing chores too. My house is a mess, and it’s hard to request they keep their rooms clean when the living room isn’t much neater. I also don’t feel I’m very good at teaching them how to clean up their spaces. My daughter is so much like me that I find her room impossible to tackle – I send my husband in there to help her and I deal with my son’s room.

We started with a beautiful chore chart and they were each supposed to earn a certain number of points during the week by doing a certain number of chores. Chores were broken down into 1-point tasks so they would be easy for the kids to complete. They had to do as many chores points as their age, so our daughter had to do slightly more than our son. We made it through the first week okay, but quickly fell out of the habit. The second week I was actually reminding them and they basically refused to do stuff. In the end I was too tired to have the battles over the screen time that we promised we’d take away if they didn’t contribute.

The week of trying out different stuff did help my daughter figure out what she liked to do best, and what she really disliked doing. She hates wiping off the kitchen counters in the morning (which I think is a super easy, and satisfying, chore), but she doesn’t mind cleaning the bathroom (which, in my opinion, is the worst!)

So I have been teaching my daughter how to clean the bathroom and she now cleans the upstairs bathroom (sink, toilet, floor) twice a month and cleans the bathtub once a month. It certainly needs a little work after she’s done, but she’s learning how to do it.

We have them bring their dishes into the kitchen sink, and we were having them load the dishwasher but that required more energy from me than it was worth. My husband actually does the dishes and isn’t interested in training them on it so I’ve let that possibility go.

I do their laundry but am having them put away their clothes. My daughter (10yo) has to put away everything, I only make my son (6yo) put away his pjs, socks and underwear. I still fold and put away his shirts and pants.

I was making my daughter actually fold her laundry but that fight got old pretty fast so now I just require it be put into drawers that can be closed. The clothes she wears now are terribly wrinkled but I’m just letting it go because I feel like it’s not my place to make her do things the way I want them done. I tell myself that as long as her dresser can function it’s not really my business. At least, I’m willing to concede it if she at least gets the clothes put away. I’m assuming at some point in her life she will get sick of wearing wrinkled clothes and ask me how to fold them again.

I tried to teach my son to sweep but he almost smashed a hole in our TV with the end of the broom twice so I stopped. I’ve had him vacuum his carpet a couple of times but he insists on wearing ear plugs and I’m almost out of those…

I honestly don’t know what else to have them do. Their attitudes about it suck, even though we’ve tried to frame it as everyone helping out so that we can all be happier. My daughter seems to get it and wants to help but my son is frankly a jerk about it. He seems to have zero interest in contributing. I’m really hoping it’s his age and that I am not raising an asshat.

I didn’t have to do many chores until I was older and honestly I think that is part of why I’m so bad at basic adult functioning now (or maybe my mom tried and I was so useless distracted and unhelpful she just eventually gave up. Cleaning the bathroom and loading the dishwasher were definitely my chores eventually but I don’t know if I ever did my own laundry until college(!!).) I want to make sure my kids are doing more.

Did you do chores as a kid? If so, which ones and at how old? Do you make your own kids do chores (if you have any)? How do you frame them?

This too shall pass

After writing Sunday night’s post, and immediately pressing publish, I felt a little better. Sometimes just writing the words helps.

Then yesterday morning, as I was responding to a comment, I realized that I am due to have my period this week. Immediately upon realizing that I felt better because I KNOW part of the hopelessness and overwhelm that I’m feeling is due to hormonal shifts. I will almost certainly feel better by next week.

I also talked to a friend and now feel better about the decision I have to make. That definitely helps.

So far I’ve been pretty good about taking this one day at a time. The uncertainty hasn’t been as anxiety-inducing as I expected (as a Type A super planner I find long term uncertainty very difficult to deal with – and yes I recognize life is defined by uncertainty but usually we can ignore that by focusing on what we EXPECT will happen – without that illusion the reality of uncertainty is impossible to ignore). I have really and truly taken it one day (really probably more like one week) at a time. But…

Since we finished school a week ago, and the frenzy of my daily schedule subsided, there was a gaping hole left in my brain and I guess my anxiety rose to fill it. Having to fill the days with my kids is not helping. My husband has been incredibly busy with work so he is basically downstairs 10-14 hours a day, leaving me to manage all the kids’ waking hours save dinner or bedtime (he usually comes up for one of them).

I’ve been taking the kids outside for 3-4 hours a day with a friend’s daughter, and that helps. For a while I thought it was stressing me out more, but then one day we cancelled all our plans and the hours marched so slowly – my kids were literally staring at the clock, trying to will it to say 5:30 so they could play videogames. It sucked, way more than getting them outside has. And realizing that even if we don’t do anything it’s so, so hard spiked my anxiety even more.

{I’m also realizing decision fatigue is at play. What should we do tomorrow? When will I fit in the minuscule amount of academic “work” I’m requiring from my kids (it’s just playing academic games! Why do they fight it so hard?!) Should I attempt a Zones of Regulation lesson? What will I make them for the three meals they will inevitably fight me on? Do the need to shower? When did they last showered?! The loss of structure to our weeks and days is making decision fatigue a real issue. It’s definitely contributing to my anxiety.}

My kids are so needy lately – they are with us more than they ever have been and yet they seem to demand our attention even more than usual. Lately they even demand we play Minecraft and other Switch games with them – so we’re not even getting that time to wind down as adults! I don’t know what is going on, but it’s incredibly draining. I try to set boundaries, but their reactions require so much management that it’s easier to just play the games. I definitely need some respite.

{I’m sure part of the issue is they are craving connection and what they get is so limited (my son has not seen one friend, even socially distanced, since this started in mid-March) that they are turning to us to fill all their needs of connection. The longer this goes on, and the more time we spend together, the more they will want to be with us. It’s a vicious cycle.}

I ended up getting both kids into camp for the last three weeks of summer so there is that light at the end of the tunnel. But man, there are a lot of days between now and then (session three camps start 7/27), and of course afterward we go back to this new normal, except harder when school starts, I’m sure.

Another thing I DEFINITELY need to do is unplug from the news cycle. Reading the same articles about coronavirus surges around the country is not helping. If policy makers aren’t going to change the way we play this game based on the new data, it’s not going to do me any good to read about it. I am extremely lucky that I don’t have to worry much about my own family as none of us are immunosuppressed or have underlying conditions. My inlaws are so careful they won’t even leave the car to wave at us when they stop by and my parents are making their own choices to widen their circle in outside socially distant scenarios (they asked to take my kids for a spend the night and I finally agreed – my kids will be there next week).

I am recognizing that I need to find my own mindset about how to proceed (within our state and regional guidelines) because this is not going away for a long time and I need to do what makes sense for me and my family. Reading a million articles is not going to help me figure out how I feel about this stuff because they aren’t providing new information. So I need to take what I know and make the choices that I feel are best for me and my family. It’s all about risk assessment. We do this all the time as parents, we just usually aren’t exposed to a constant, recurring news cycles about it we can access at the swipe of a screen.

{On a related note, I was realizing that I had fallen into the same patterns of obsessive reading and indecision that plagued my early motherhood experience – especially around breastfeeding – that made me so crazy when my kids were infants. There is no end to the articles on whether it’s better to breast or bottle feed – pump or give formula – if you enter a certain search term, but reading them will never give you peace of mind until you find it in yourself. I honestly never recognized how anxiety inducing it all was for me until it was over and I had some distance from it. Hopefully I can use what I learned there to help guide me in this new age of uncertain and currently incomplete data driving public health policy.

I also need to tackle the clutter in my house. There has been so much change as we moved downstairs and I haven’t been great about the stuff that has been displaced or moved around as we shifted living spaces. The state of the house, and the garage, is definitely causing stress, and if I deal with it I will feel better. (I know this isn’t true for all people but it is for me.) Last week I painted a room in our house and that room looks amazing. Now I need to tackle the other living spaces, and schedule a bulky item pick up so we can get some stuff out of the house (the shed is already overflowing with items I want to eventually donate).

Finally, I want to start meditating again. I think that will definitely help and I have access to two apps (Balance and Calm) so there is no excuse not to do it at least five minutes a day.

Hopefully if I focus on a few important changes, I will feel better. Just having a plan eases the anxiety a little bit. Any respite from this horrible feeling would be a respite.

Struggling

I’m really struggling right now. I’m struggling with anxiety in a way I haven’t in a long time. Maybe ever. It started when I saw the proposed plan for next school year that my district sent out early last week. It has to be approved by the board, and then negotiated with our union, so it’s certainly not a final draft. But the proposal was panic-inducing. They are talking about us teaching 3-4 hours (non-content specific) on campus in the morning four days a week while also meeting with students who elect not to come to campus, and pushing our content-specific work in the afternoons. This is after we disinfect our own classrooms every day before we leave so that the other group we see can come in the next day. On Friday, we have time to prep and grade all the online work, and I suppose prepare for in-class hours the next week. I don’t think we’ll be creating the content we are teaching in the classroom, but we’ll have to learn it well enough to teach it. From what I can tell, they are basically asking us to do two full time jobs, while also acting as custodians. It’s insane.

Again, I know the plan will change significantly before we start in the fall, but seeing the proposed plan makes me realize just how hard next year is going to be. If I thought I worked long hours this past spring, I’m now confident that the next school year will be much, much worse.

I also don’t know if my own kids will be on their campus at all, and even if they are, when and how will I help them with their online learning? The only thing keeping me from panicking on that front is that my husband doesn’t have to return to his office until 2021, so I know he’ll at least be in the house through December.

The whole thing feels like a disaster, and I am processing that while realizing that this is not our new normal for just the fall, or even the next school year, but probably for years to come.

It’s overwhelming. And it’s causing me a lot of anxiety.

I also have a hard choice to make and I am feeling very indecisive about it. I don’t want to bring it up here, because I’m less and less interested in inviting other people to judge me and my decisions, but I will admit that it’s not helping my anxiety at all.

I don’t think I’ll be here much, at least for a little while. I’m struggling to participate in the blog world at all right now – for a number of reasons, and showing up here is feeling harder and harder.

I’ve worked through acute anxiety before, but I’m not as familiar with it as I am with depression and it’s harder for me to manage. I’m going to have to figure something out, but it’s hard when I’m with my kids 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Things are just really hard right now.

And yet I recognize that I’m one of the lucky ones, who has more than most during this incredibly difficult time. It’s terrifying to think of how bad things must be for most people in this country. I still sometimes can’t even wrap my head around the fact that this is happening.

We Can Do Hard Things

One of the takeaways from Glennon Doyle’s Untamed was the difficult-to-distinguish line we walk as parents between sheltering our kids from difficulties they can’t yet manage and allowing them to develop resilience through disappointment and struggle. A mantra in her house has become, we can do hard things.

I have been using it a lot with my kids these past couple of months. I said it to them when we were riding bikes at the Great Highway and the wind was whipping sand into our faces, assaulting our eyes and mouths. I said it when we were hiking up a very steep, long hill, and my kids wanted desperately to just turn around and head back. I said it when my daughter was crying that Typing Club was too hard because she never felt like she was getting better. I said it when my son complained that he couldn’t practice handwriting because it made his fingers hurt. I’ve said it a lot lately.

I said it to myself on Sunday night when I scheduled Monday’s post to publish. I repeated it over and over as the day wore on and I wondered what kind of response the post would get. I said it Monday night when I thought about what kind of follow up I would post.

I know it might not seem like much to put up a post like that, but it felt scary at the time. I used to entangle myself in all kinds of unnecessary blog drama, but I am not in the business of writing intentionally controversial posts anymore. At least I haven’t been for a while. So putting that up felt scary; I have been berated by a great many privileged parents who have no interest in recognizing their part in perpetuating inequality. But as I said at the end of that post, if white people aren’t doing things that make them deeply uncomfortable they probably aren’t doing anything meaningful to confront their privilege and combat white supremacy and systematic racism. But there is good news.

We can do hard things.

I appreciate the conversation we had in the comment section below that post. These are hard topics and I certainly don’t have all the answers (or any answers?). I did a lot more reading on the topic of school integration, and specifically if white parents should send their white kids to struggling schools, as a way to promote equality. Here are some of the articles I found, which look at this topic through different lenses, focusing on different data and experiences. Some of the articles seem to assert contradictory conclusions, but that is the nature of most research that attempts to parse out the myriad variables that can affect something as nebulous as “academic achievement.”

Thank you for reading, and asking yourself these hard questions. If, as you read through these articles, you find immediate relief or disbelief in an idea or assertion, I hope you’ll think hard about what possible bias is being supported and or challenged. All humans cling to data and arguments that support our beliefs, while easily discarding that challenges our assumptions. Now, more than ever, we need to do better. We mustn’t squander the momentum of this movement to thrust us into uncomfortable spaces. If not now, when?

We can do hard things.

My White, Northern liberal friends who like to compare themselves favorably to White conservatives may be surprised by a new report from brightbeam (the parent organization that sponsors Chicago Unheard), which shows that the 12 most politically progressive cities in the U.S. have significantly larger achievement gaps in reading, math and high school graduation than the 12 most politically conservative cities. Many of those conservative, gap-closing cities are located in the southern part of the U.S., while the high-gap cities are concentrated in the North.

White People: Here’s Why Moving to a “Good School” in a “Good Neighborhood” Is Racist

Overall, white, advantaged parents appear to be measuring school quality by how many other white, advantaged parents send their children to a given school, said the Harvard report. Integrated schools are seen as educationally inferior, even as, paradoxically, parents recognize their value in the abstract, said Richard Weissbourd, a senior lecturer at the Harvard graduate education school and a study co-author.

White Parents Say They Value Integrated Schools. Their Actions Speak Differently

No one says “I don’t want to send my kid to a Black and Latino school.” They don’t have to. Although the data on test scores, race, and class is endlessly complex, the district — and GreatSchools.com, the site that appears at the top of every online search about every school in the nation — has boiled it down to a simple set of numbers. The school I visited that day is ranked at the very bottom of the scale; another school six blocks away is ranked 8 out of 10, and has won multiple prestigious awards. Its student body is 60 percent white.

The Truth About ‘Underperforming Schools’ That Parents Don’t Want To Admit

It turns out that the kindergarten teacher who advised me was probably right. Several decades of research studies have examined the impact when higher-performing students attend class with much lower-performing students. The bottom line is that the test scores of higher-performing children do indeed suffer in this kind of scenario.2 ¶ Interestingly, however, the same impact is not observed when the ability difference between children is modest. The test scores of higher-performing students grow with nearly the same trajectory regardless of whether they’re in class with other higher-performing students or with students whose performance is middling.

Do High-Performing Kids Suffer When They’re in Low-Performing Schools?

And then let’s get one thing straight: White families are not doing families of color a favor by deigning to attend—and helpfully “improve”—their quaint, struggling schools, and Black and Latino families are not doing you a favor by adding a splash of color to Junior’s classroom.

White Families You’re Not Doing My Kids Any Favors By Sending Your Kids to Our School

For instance, Malcolm Gladwell’s recent Revisionist History podcast discussing the damage done to African-American children by Brown v. Board of Education, made me think of my African-American father-in-law. ¶ He grew up in Virginia under Jim Crow and, to this day, laments desegregation. “It ruined our Black schools,” he tells me. “They took the best Black teachers away.” Gladwell addresses the decimation of the Black teacher corps in his podcast, and the value of teachers of color is covered here.

Do Dual Language Programs Keep The Language of Privilege From Kids Who Need It Most?

For one thing, policymakers and scholars across the political spectrum are beginning to realize that ignoring the social science research on the negative effects of concentrated school poverty is not working to close large achievement gaps between races and economic groups. Diane Ravitch and Michelle Rhee—who represent opposite ends of our polarized debates over education reform—have both recently advocated new measures to promote school integration to raise the achievement of disadvantaged students.

How Racially Diverse Schools and Classrooms Can Benefit All Students

But here’s the thing: The academic and social advantages white kids gain in integrated schools have been consistently documented by a rich body of peer-reviewed research over the last 15 years. And as strange as it may sound, many social scientists—and, increasingly, leaders in the business world—argue that diverse schools actually benefit white kids the most.

3 Ways White Kids Benefit Most From Racially Diverse Schools

On average, students in socioeconomically and racially diverse schools—regardless of a student’s own economic status—have stronger academic outcomes than students in schools with concentrated poverty.

The Benefits of Socioeconomically and Racially Integrated Schools and Classrooms

Over the last 40 years, efforts to desegregate schools have largely been undone and intra-district programs have limited scope to stem the resulting rise in segregation. This is thefirst paper to study the short-run and long-run impacts of aninter-districtdesegregationprogram on the minority students given an opportunity to transfer to majority-white schooldistricts. Students who are given the opportunity to transfer districts attend schools thatare 73 percentage points more white than schools they would have attended. Transferringstudents have higher test scores, and, over the longer run, an increase in college enrollmentby 8 percentage points. At the same time, there is an increase in special education classifi-cation and arrests, which are largely for non-violent offenses. Both the benefits and the risksof the desegregation program accrue to male students.

The Risks and Benefits of School Integration for ParticipatingStudents: Evidence from a Randomized Desegregation Program

Sixty-five is the typical age of retirement in this country, and on this 65th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, segregation desperately needs to retire. Retire the myth that we tried integration for a long time. Retire the misconception that it just didn’t work. Retire the fallacy that desegregation is no longer relevant. Today, America’s schoolchildren are more racially and ethnically diverse than ever, yet half attend schools in which more than three-quarters of their peers are of the same race. Indeed, classrooms around the country are as segregated now as they were before Brown.

Why school integration works

Thank you for reading. Please include links in the comments if you find more to contribute to this conversation!

The Ultimate Antiracist Measuring Stick

In my opinion, one of the most important aspects of the current Black Lives Matters movement is the distinction “anti-racist.” For too long white people, like me, have been able to vehemently assure ourselves, and others, that we are not racist, while doing nothing meaningful to dismantle the systematic racism that lifts us up while keeping black people down.

As Ibram X. Kendi so articulately explains in How to be an Antiracist there is no such thing as passive anti-racism. Racism does not stop at the vocal, hate mongerer who supports policy that perpetuates the exploitation of black and brown people. Racism is ALSO the refusal of white people to tear down the systems that we benefit from so that we might promote equality for all.

The opposite of “racist” isn’t “not racist.”

Ibram X. Kendi, How to be an Antiracist

White people are generally quite enthusiastic to enumerate all the ways they are not racist, but when it comes to recognizing their privilege and actively giving up some of that privilege, they are generally much less likely to support antiracist policies.

The arena in which this is most evident is education.

A lot of parents right now are talking about how they are going to talk to their kids more about racism, and make sure their kids read books by people of color. They pledge that antiracist ideas will be shared and discussed regularly. But I wonder if those same parents are ready to embrace antiracist ideals at the most important of places, their children’s schools.

So far they have not been. Quite the opposite in fact. Brown vs. Board of Education determined that school segregation was unconstitutional in 1954, and yet schools are more segregated now than they have been in decades. White parents have been flexing their privilege to ensure that their kids get the best education possible, while allowing children of color to languish in underfunded public schools that white parents would never let their children attend. Finding ways to effectively segregate public schools, even though research shows that integration is the most effective way to close the achievement gap and promote equality, is one of the ways white parents – even the ones who believe they are not racist – are perpetuating systematic racism.

{This is especially prevalent in San Francisco, where the upper middle class families that don’t forgo the public school system entirely, cluster at a few well-regarded schools where they raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to provide technology the school otherwise couldn’t afford, and even hire teachers to run enrichment programs. Meanwhile the vast majority of schools in the city are Title 1, and struggle to raise enough money for teacher appreciation efforts.}

If you are a parent and you believe you are antiracist, I encourage you to answer these questions for yourself:

  • Do you send your kid(s) to a private or public school?
  • Do most of your kid(s)’classmates look like them?
  • Do most of their classmates come from the same socioeconomic background?
  • Do you send your kid(s) to school with a significant population of black and brown children?
  • Do you send your kid(s) to school with a significant population of students who qualify for free and reduced lunch?
  • Do you send your kid(s) to a school that is better funded, has more experienced and qualified teachers, and offers more electives and enrichment programs than the schools the vast majority of students of color attend?

How do your answers inform your understanding of yourself as an antiracist?

If you are realizing that your children are getting a higher quality education than most children of color, ask yourself if you’d be willing to send your kids to a school with a significant number of black and brown students, or a significant percentage of students that qualify for free and reduced lunch. Would you be willing to do either of those things if it were clear your child were getting an inferior education than is offered elsewhere?

This is where most white people absolutely refuse to cede their privilege. We always have really good reasons for why we make the choices we do, and how it doesn’t mean we are racist, but now that we understand that perpetuating systematic racism is a form of racism, we need to be more honest with ourselves about the choices we make for our own children, and the way those choices affect children of color.

If you have made a series of decisions (that you were only able to make because of your privilege) that ensure your child has access to a superior education, but you want to do more to ensure that ALL children have access to the same quality of education, I encourage you to answer these questions honestly for yourself:

  • Would you support programs that incentivize teachers with more experience to teach at schools with under served populations?
  • Would you support programs that incentive teacher retention at schools with under served populations?
  • Would you support sharing PTA funds raised at your school with nearby school(s) that serve primarily students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds?
  • Would you support pooling all PTA funds in your district to be distributed evenly between all the schools and/or shared with schools in a neighboring district?
  • Would you be willing to abolish PTAs and EdFoundations so that wealthier parents are not able to subsidize their child’s public education while the students in lower income neighborhoods are left to make do with what is actually provided by the state and federal governments?
  • Would you support policy that takes into account PTA and EdFoundation funding when distributing state and federal funds?
  • Would you be willing to share a post that asks questions like this one with your family and friends?
  • Would you be willing to have difficult conversations about how the systems that benefit you and your child(ren), simultaneously disadvantage students of color?
  • Would you be willing for your child to have less so that other children who need more, could have more?

How do your answers to these questions inform your understanding of yourself as antiracist?

If you would answer no to many of these questions, I’m sure you have a good reason. We all do. But we have to recognize that our good reasons have been crafted and refined by decades of systematic racism that allow us, and our children, to benefit from structures of inequality. If we really are antiracist, and we really want to break down those systems, we have to start asking ourselves what we’re willing to give up so that all children have equal opportunities (even if that means it looks like socioeconomically disadvantaged kids are getting MORE, because initially they will need more to counteract the damage wrought by generations of oppression, white supremacy, and systematic racism).

All white people have a lot of work to do to start dismantling the systems that have bolstered our success by denying opportunities to others. White parents probably have the most work to do, and I worry we aren’t ready to do it. In the current culture of scarcity, when so many upper middle class parents already perceive the opportunities their children have to be dwindling, I doubt white, upper-middle class parents are willing to cede even small amounts of their privilege if they perceive it to mean their child(ren) might have fewer opportunities to succeed.

I think we’ll start to see if white parents really are embracing their new antiracist ideals in the fall, when districts have to make hard choices about how to bring students and teachers back safely while the coronavirus still rages. Some districts are already talking about prioritizing classroom time for students who were unable to effectively access distance learning because they lack adequate technology or internet service, and/or are in desperate need of other services the school provides. This might mean that students who can adequately access distance learning (and are not facing food scarcity, or homeless, or domestic abuse) will not be in the classroom as much, if at all.

Will middle and upper middle class parents support these decisions, understanding that lower income students really should be prioritized for classroom teaching so they can access services, make up lost learning, and not fall even farther behind? Or will they try to flex their privilege under the guise of “equality for all?”

Governor Newsom is already distributing more emergency funds to districts with higher percentages of lower income students, and privileged parents are already fighting to get those funds distributed evenly to all districts, regardless of the real needs of different student populations.

If you’re white, upper middle class, (and you haven’t previously been deeply engaged in the BLM movement), and you’re not doing something that makes you uncomfortable right now, you’re probably not supporting anti-racism in any kind of meaningful way. Reading books is not enough. Talking to your children is not enough. If what you’re doing doesn’t feel hard, or unfair, or scary, you’re not even approaching your privilege, let alone attempting to dismantling it. I know I’m not doing enough,* and I’m trying to think of ways I can do more.

Asking these questions is a first step. I hope you’ll take it with me.

*I am not trying to portray myself as some woke white woman who is making all the sacrifices when it comes to my kids’ education. Yes, I send them to a school where they are the in minority in being white (5%) and not qualifying for free and reduced lunch (15% – though our combined household income probably puts us at <3% at our school). I am also a teacher and I am probably more confident determining the quality of education my kids are receiving than most parents. Furthermore, I don’t plan to send my daughter to that school for 6th grade, because I don’t think she’ll receive an adequate education there. When I transfer my daughter to a different school where I think she’ll get a better education, I’ll be flexing my privilege ( I’m now considering schools I would not have, because of the BLM movement).

I also teach in a district that serves primarily upper-middle class families, and while I could paint a pretty picture about how I ended up there and why I stayed, the reality is that I don’t want to teach at a struggling school because (a) I make more money where I’m at and (b) it’s a lot harder to teach at schools with primarily under-served students. So while I’m trying hard to flex my privilege for all students, I could absolutely being doing more, both as a parents and teacher. I haven’t made all the right choices and I still benefit from my privilege in ways I recognize, and in ways I’m ignorant of, every day.

Outside time

I know there are those who are not interested in reading about everyday life right now, when the world is on fire. I recognize my incredible privilege in being able to focus on my day to day existence without fear of the police or other authorities, without fear of losing my job or house, or food security. I am going to continue writing here about my life, trusting that those who do not want to engage in my white, upper middle class, white privilege will step away when they want to.

My daughter turned 10 yesterday. It was a long weekend, full of complicated emotions, but she did feel celebrated by family and friends. I feel very lucky that we are part of a community of women that showed up for her. I tried hard to make showing up something that even those who are most concerned about the virus would feel comfortable doing, and I think that helped.

My husband and I are working through some hard things as a couple right now. We feel differently about what is appropriate and what is inappropriate during this time of tentatively opening up. I respect his feelings and always run my plans by him, and change them when necessary. Where I struggle is in his inability (or unwillingness) to recognize that his mindset relies heavily on his privilege as a man who has a separate space in his own home to work uninterrupted, and a wife who cares for his children so that his time there remains uninterrupted. I think he takes for granted the reality of what must happen so that he can come upstairs to two children who have received the attention, care, and outside time required to be physically, mentally and emotionally healthy. I think he also doesn’t recognize that what he needs to manage this time (as an introvert who doesn’t crave human interaction most days), is different from what others need (including his extroverted wife and daughter). I understand his feelings are also based on a complicated set of circumstances, and I want very much to support him, but I feel like my efforts, and their positive consequences, are taken for granted. It’s easy to judge the “choices” of others when your own “choices” are steeped in privilege (says the woman with extraordinary privilege).

Right now I’m in a nearby park, at the site of a popular summer camp, hanging out while my kids play with three close friends. Since I have more flexibility in when I actually get work done during this last week of school, I’m providing supervised outside time to the kids of some friends who feel comfortable with their kids being near other kids in an outside space (not surprisingly, these women all are essential workers – and single moms – who would have their kids in city-run essential child care programs right now if they weren’t out with us). I feel I’m providing a real opportunity for these kids to learn how to pass the time outside, without toys or screens. They have to work things out among themselves and learn how to amuse themselves with (very) limited adult intervention. We get to be in this spot for one more week, then the city’s Rec and Park program will be here and two of the girls are starting at another Rec and Park program so we will be figuring something else out. For now it works and I think the time outside with others is worth the risk.

These are hard times and I’m just trying to keep my head above water, without making choices that I will totally regret in the future. And honestly, right now my kids’ mental and emotional health feels more at risk being stuck at home all summer than their physical health is at risk by being outside with others. I may be wrong and I might have to face those consequences. Only time will tell. But without any hope for a safer tomorrow (at least not in the next year or longer), I’m figuring out what risks I’m willing to take today. I suppose we all are. Right now we are following all the guidelines that the city has put in place for summer camp programs, which will be opening on June 15th (groups of 12 or less, same group over an extended period (at least three weeks), meeting outside). I feel confident that we aren’t putting anyone at risk who isn’t making the same choices that we are making. Weighing the rewards while attempting to mitigate the risks is the name of the game right now – and it will continue to be for the foreseeable future. This is the new normal.

Unraveling the patriarchy in my own brain

I recently read Untamed by Glennon Doyle, and while I really liked the book and a lot of parts spoke to me, one part that really started unraveling things in my brain was about the patriarchal mindfuckery that women perpetuate against themselves and others. She introduces the concept by talking about how a girl who was playing soccer against her daughter was really rubbing her the wrong way.

I sat with my feelings and I realized: The knee-jerk reaction I’m having to this girl is a direct result of my training. I have been conditioned to mistrust and dislike strong, confident, happy girls and women. We all have. Studies prove that the more powerful, successful, and happy a man becomes, the more people trust and like him. But the more powerful and happy a woman becomes, the less people like and trust her. So we proclaim: Women are entitled to take their rightful place! Then, when a woman does take her rightful place, our first reaction is: She’s so… entitled. We become people who say of confident women, “I don’t know, I can’t explain it–it’s just something about her. I just don’t like her. I can’t put my finger on why.”

Glennon Doyle, Untamed, pg 285

If you had asked me before I read the book if I disliked or mistrusted strong, confident, happy girls and women I would have said, unequivocally, absolutely not. But after reading that paragraph, I immediately recognized myself in those words. There have been so many times that I’ve read a blog post and thought, that woman is so… entitled. Or, I can’t believe she’s not even mentioning her privilege. Or, whoa, humble brag much?

I really didn’t like those bloggers, but I couldn’t quite put my fingers on why.

And yet I kept reading them. I thought maybe I was hate reading them. I think the reality was a subtler distinction. Maybe I knew, subconsciously, that they actually had something of value to say, even if I didn’t like the way they said it. Maybe I recognized that my judgement was about something else, something deeper. What I definitely didn’t consciously understand was this:

I can put my finger on why: It’s because our training is kicking in through our subconscious. Strong, happy, confident girls and women are breaking our culture’s implicit rule that girls should be self-doubting, reserved, timid, apologetic. Girls who are bold enough to break those rules irk us. Their brazen defiance and refusal to follow directions make us want to put them back into their cage.

Glennon Doyle, Untamed, pg 285

That was me. I didn’t realize it, but that was me. It still is me, even though I don’t want it to be. I don’t know where I learned it – maybe if was from a childhood of being so loud and boisterous and energetic that I constantly got messages about being “too much.” Maybe I’m just especially sensitive to the beliefs that are conveyed in the words that are not said. Maybe it was just the implicit (and explicit) messages all girls get, and the messages they keep getting even into adulthood. Maybe it’s a lack of self confidence. I can’t point to a specific source, but I definitely internalized that message at some point. I still internalize it today. And when I come across a woman who is brazenly being herself, announcing her beliefs, opinions, and accomplishments without apology, she irks me. I recognize that she is breaking the rules, even if I can’t articulate them, and I think, well why do you get to do that?

Girls and women sense this. We want to be liked. We want to be trusted. So we downplay our strengths to avoid threatening anyone and invoking disdain. We do not mention our accomplishments. We do not accept compliments. We temper, qualify, and discount our opinions. We walk without swagger, and we yield incessantly. We step out of the way. We say, “I feel like” instead of “I know.” We ask if our ideas make sense instead of assuming they do. We apologize for… everything. Conversations among brilliant woman often devolve into competitions for who wins the trophy for hottest mess. We want to be respected but we want to be loved and accepted even more.

Glennon Doyle, Untamed, pg 285

Amen to that.

I do these things. Without question. I devalue my strengths. I moderate my opinions. I express things I know to be true as mere possibilities. I apologize constantly (something I wrote about trying to stop). I see my friends and I downplaying our accomplishments on our text chains, but proudly announcing the disasters that are our lives. I don’t feel comfortable talking about what is working well in my life without tempering it with recognition of my privilege, or couching it among other things I’m failing at (and much prefer the bloggers who do this as well). I experience it around me all the time, and it’s so normal that I don’t even recognize it for what it is – a patriarchal mindfuck meant to keep women down. I have been conditioned. I exist in this system. It’s hard to see the forest for the trees.

I’ve been reading the bloggers that used to rub me the wrong way with new eyes since I read those paragraphs. I’m much better at recognizing when a post bothers me because I subconsciously feel like the woman is breaking the rules, and when I genuinely disagree with their opinion. It’s hard for me to figure out sometimes, and there are many instances when I’m just not sure. I’m working through it. I’m in patriarchal mindfuckery recovery. I don’t necessarily trust myself yet, but I thought I was getting better.

I finished Untamed over a month ago. I’ve been meaning to write about this for a long time, but I kept putting it off. I’m writing it now because I just recently fell into this trap again. A woman wrote a strongly worded post expressing her opinion without apology. I read the post, and even though I knew it had nothing to do with me, it irked me. It rubbed me the wrong way. I wrote a comment, confident I was coming from a place of objectivity, and then wrote a response to her response, even more confident of my objectivity. And then I sat with what I wrote, and the response. And slowly but surely, I recognized that I had fallen prey to the patriarchal mindfuckery yet again. I didn’t like the post because I didn’t like how brazenly she stated her opinion, without tempering any of it with any statements of “not being sure what to say” or “being open to learning more.” She just said it. Full stop. And it irked me. And instead of stopping to think about it, I ruffled my own feathers and wrote a comment. And then I wrote another (but she very kindly posted it herself under Anon like I asked because I accidentally submitted it with my IRL email and I requested she not post it that way.)

So here I am, writing this post, after being reminded yet again of my tendency to judge women by a set of beliefs I have no interest in perpetuating. I have to say, the patriarchal mindfuckery is insidious and effective and it will require constant vigilance for me to see the world clearly when its messages are part of the software of my brain and color how I interpret everything.

White Silence

I have been silent here about what is happening in our country. I can be silent – I can wait and try to figure out the right thing to say – because of my privilege. I recognize that. I also recognize that hiding behind my privilege, and staying silent, is not what I want to do, or who I want to be. So here I am, saying something, even though it’s probably not the right thing.

Yes I will be reading more black authors. Yes I will be support Black Rights organizations with donations. Yes I will be spending my money at black businesses in my city and elsewhere. Yes I will be talking to my kids more about racism. Yes, I believe these are all important steps and yes, I recognize none of this is enough.

I care deeply about creating equality in my community, and the world. I send my kids to a very underperforming school where they, as white upper middle class students, are the minority. I could easily send them to another school in San Francisco, with more middle and upper middle class students, where I don’t need to be so involved in the school because other parents are willing and able to do it. I could even send them to schools in my own district, where the student population is even whiter and wealthier. I don’t. I keep my kids in the diverse, and struggling school in our neighborhood, so they will grow up in the diversity I want to see everywhere in the world. Where they will have friends that look differently than they do, and who grow up in homes very different than ours. (And they do). I also send them to that school so that I am motivated to work at the ground level to create change in the schools in our district that really need it.

I like to think that I am “walking the walk” by sending my kids to that school. I’ve seen first hand, and read in comments on my blog, that most upper middle class parents are not willing to make that choice. And yet I know it’s not enough.

I want to volunteer for an organization that supports and advocates for black students in SFUSD, where they performing at alarmingly low rates. SFUSD fails a large portion of its student population, but it fails no group as profoundly as it fails black children. I am a teacher and I understand education reform better than most things. This feels like a place where I can make a difference, or at least try to.

So that is what I will be doing. I will let you know more about my efforts as I move forward with this.

Milestones

{This post was written last week, before everything went to hell in a hand basket. It feels important that I mention that.}

Mali recently wrote a post about experience, and she mentioned that once she read an infertility blogger say that after the birth of her second child she was all done with major positive milestones in her life, and that all she has to look forward to were the negative ones (like divorces and deaths).

I’m pretty sure that blogger was me.

If it wasn’t me, I’m sure I wrote a post about that after my son was born, at least once. I can’t remember when or even where (it is probably on my old, old blog and I am not taking the time to comb through those posts – what a rabbit hole). And the thing is I remember having those thoughts and feelings and I think I have a decent recollections of what I said in the post, so I thought I’d do a bit of a follow up.

I absolutely do remember writing something like that. I remember feeling something like that. My mid twenties to my mid thirties felt like such a monuments time. I was checking off all the boxes I had been worried would be left unchecked, and I was incredibly relieved that I was married with two children in my mid thirties. This was literally all I wanted for my life, at least it was at the time.

Perhaps that is why I felt I had passed up all my milestones. But it was probably other things as well, like the fact that I was earlier to do all that stuff than my close friends (because I was afraid of being infertile before I even had sex thanks to my mom’s history and my own amenorrhea), and I knew they all still had that to anticipate.

{And let’s not forget that I am someone who struggles enough with comparing myself with others that I left ALL FORMS of social media except for blogging around this time and NEVER WENT BACK. Clearly, I am someone who looks externally for validation that should be coming from within.}

Maybe it was because I chose my profession mostly as a “thing to do so I could still be with my kids a lot,” and not because I was necessarily passionate about it (which, by the way, is a horrible reason to choose a profession – I don’t recommend it) . I’ve never felt a big pull to any professional calling and that has always felt like a fault, or character flaw of mine (I can’t tell you how many messages my generation got about following our bliss and living our passion), so I didn’t readily value the work I would do moving forward. This is something I still struggle with to some degree.

I believe at the time my marriage wasn’t super strong. It wasn’t bad, but my husband and I had a lot of work to do. It’s sad to say, but I don’t think, at that point, I really looked forward to a lifetime with my husband. We felt like co-parents more than even partners or friends. Emotionally, we were too exhausted to work on our relationship.

At that point I had no big goals to work toward or accomplish. I felt stuck in a lot of areas of my life. Work felt like something I had to do to make money, not because it was meaningful to me. I had flirted with ramping up my writing but realized that wasn’t something I really loved either, and I was letting that dream go. I had a few close friends, but I could sense those friendships were floundering. (They imploded not long after.) I guess I just felt like I didn’t have any big life events to anticipate.

I think really, I wasn’t that happy at that point of my life, and I was realizing that there wasn’t any big life event left to make me happy. I thought getting married and having kids would give my life ULTIMATE MEANING, and that after I had those things I would be FOREVER CONTENT. I’ve spent a lot of the last six years (decade really) coming to terms with the fact that contentment has to be something I find inside myself, not in my family or anything else.

That is not to say that my family doesn’t make me happy. They do. They absolutely do. There is not a day that goes by (at least not many) where I don’t actively feel grateful for what I have. Because I really do have everything I ever wanted.

But I appreciate it all now, much more than I did back then, because I’ve done some soul searching about a lot of things, and I’ve learned that once you hit a certain point in your life (like, the point where you have everything you thought you wanted) contentment is choice you haven’t to actively, not a guaranteed outcome.

I’ve spent the last few years thinking a lot about my job, about whether or not I’m happy there and whether or not I feel fulfilled. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m as happy and fulfilled there as I would be anywhere. I can skate by when that is what I need and I can challenge myself when I need something more. I am proud of what I do at my job and I know there are ways I could expand my professional repertoire if I really want to.

Things are happier at home too. My husband and I have done A LOT of work to get to a place where things feel equitable enough that resentment is not a third party in our marriage. My husband and I are partners and friends now, and I genuinely look forward to spending the rest of my life with him (if we are lucky enough to have that).

I don’t think much about milestones anymore. I’m lucky that the women I “talk” to every day (mostly on a text chain) are in basically the same place as me in life, and we’re all just trying to make it work. I haven’t been on social media in ages so I’m not seeing the happy shots of the smiling kids, or the perfectly framed meal someone made, or the beautiful garden they landscaped. Basically I’m not comparing someone’s brightest moment to my lackluster every day existence, which makes me appreciate my every day existence more. My kids are older and don’t require EVERY MOMENT of my time. I can make the space in my schedule to practice martial arts, or take a time-intensive professional development class, or go out with my friends (back when that was a thing we could do). And I have good friends to go out with. My life is full and I am, for the most part, happy. The idea that I only have sad milestones left feels absurd.

Well, maybe not that absurd. I mean I am turning 40, and my parents are looking so much older than I ever imagined they would be. Two girl friends of mine are getting divorces, and another one lost a parent last year. I do feel like I’m entering a different phase of my life, one that will look a lot different than my 20s and 30s did. But I don’t believe it will be defined by loss and losing. I know a lot of other happy, positive things, are waiting for me too.

I appreciated reading Mali’s post, and being reminded of who I was back when I wrote those words about milestones (if it really was me she was referring to!) It’s nice to take the time to recognize where I was and how far I’ve come. (And less nice, but important, to reflect on how my words about my own experience made other people feel about their lives.) I really am a more content person than I was when I wrote that, and I hope I’m more sensitive when I write about my life. It’s nice to know people can change. I hope I keep changing in these kinds of ways.