September research factoid

I loved finding this...keep on huggin', boyby mamas!

New brain imaging research shows how important it is that moms of boys regularly hug, hold, and nurture their boys. This research has found that the amount of nurturing a child receives from his or her mother early in life may lead to a larger hippocampus, the area of the brain responsible for handling stress and building memory. Dr. Joan Luby, lead researcher of this study and psychiatrist at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis said, “We can now say with confidence that the psychosocial environment has a material impact on the way the human brain develops.”

by Kelley Ward
article, "What Boys Need from Moms
http://kelleyward.hubpages.com/hub/Parenting-Boys-What-Boys-Need-From-Moms

September news blurb

Hi readers
I thought this was interesting.  Have a look yourselves.  When my son is old enough to think about groups, we will clearly have our work cut out for us.

G

Former Boy Scout leader Jennifer Tyrrell, a lesbian mom from Ohio, was ousted from her position as troupe leader because of her sexuality.

The organization reviewed its policy banning participation by gay or lesbian people (as scouts or as leaders) and has decided not to make any changes, in spite of Tyrrell’s petition calling for openness.  Tyrrell was able to collect over 300,000 signatures asking the Boy Scouts to change the policy of exclusion.

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Ousted-lesbian-den-mom-delivers-petition-to-Scouts-3716731.php

http://www.pressherald.com/blogs/politicsshouldbe/149223915.html

http://www.wtrf.com/story/19049474/wtrfcom-web-preview-jennifer-tyrr

The Girl Next Door and My Boy

Welcome back dear readers!!! Boyby Mama  is home in Montreal and we’re excited to present our new format.  The first week will features the monthly essay, followed by the second week’s relevant news item, the third week an interview with another lesbian mother of a boyby followed by the last week’s “did you know?,” trivia relevant to raising kids in general or lesbian parenting or parenting of a son in particular.  If you have any suggestions don’t hesistate to write.  I’m hoping the blog becomes more interactive as time goes by.

So, here are some thoughts from August.  We spent five glorious days in a log cabin in the Laurentian mountains with our new friends and neighbors, Genvieve, Thierry and their daughter, Emily.  The four of us grownups get along fabulously and the kids had been playing together at the corner playground for about a year.  I’ve been wanting Alexi to have more connections with other kids so when the idea came up to take a vacation together, Lucie and I jumped on it.

I’ve held onto the nurture side of the nature-nurture debate since I was a young feminist at university.  I’ve read about matriarchal societies and lived amongst trans people, butches, drag queens and every other culture-defying form of gender rebellion you can imagine.  I cringe every time my father tells me that story of a hippie-artist couple living on top of a mountain without tv or computers, when their three year old son pointed his tuna sandwich at his mother and said “bang bang Mommy, you’re dead.”  At my core I deeply believe we have at least some choice over who we are and what we become and that genetic coding does not have the last word.

So when I saw Emily and Alexi during the vacation I experienced what psychology majors call “cognitive dissonance.” 

Here’s Emily:  she talks.  And talks, and talks, and talks.  And so much of her talk has to do with Alexi.  Asking Alexi if he likes to play games and if he likes to eat peaches.  Telling him that this ratty pink blanket was her doodoo (lovey).  Asking her mother why Alexi doesn’t talk, if she can eat what Alexi is having, and if Alexi will come swimming with us.

And my Alexi?  Well, for the most part, he ignored her.  That is, until the second morning, when out of nowhere he cupped her tiny face with his giant’s paws and planted a wet one right on Emily’s lips.  If you know my kid, you’ll know this is not exactly the surest route to a girl’s heart,  due to the steady stream of drool that rushes down his chin most days.

Besides the verbal-nonverbal difference, and the ways each was interested in the other, there was the subject matter of eating.  Alexi is 27 months and is still reluctant to use utensils, simply because they are far less efficient than his fingers at shoveling in as much grub as his mouth size will allow. He emerged from each meal with fully a quarter of it caked onto his chin and cheeks, stuck in his ears, sticking in his hair and soaking through his tee shirt.

Emily eats spaghetti without sauce, strand by strand, pretending it’s dental floss.  Bib, fork, grime free face and garments.  I didn’t know it was possible.

On the third day, we took a hike.  At nearly 40 pounds, Alexi was way too big to carry in our arms on the way up-so Genevieve loaned us the “backpack” she normally carries Emily in.  The little girl was inconsolable-imagine, Alexi in HER backpack!!!  Not that our boy is completely carefree with his stuff but as a person he’s not inclined to jealousy-which more often than not is a trait mainstream North American culture considers to be feminine.

What to make all of this gender play?  Well, one could easily attribute it to Emily’s significant time spent at daycare, especially around older girls.  Alexi had eight months of two mornings a week of daycare but he hasn’t been since April.  Or perhaps that Emily has 2 straight parents who embody, more than Alexi's two moms anyway, the masculine and feminine attributes.

Is there any of it that’s purely instinctive? As a gender radical I always want to believe we have the capacity to change.  I believe one reason for the failure of the women’s movement in the U.S. was the failure to include men in a larger and more ongoing dialogue.  How do men ultimately suffer when sex and gender roles are so rigidly sanctioned?  Yes, men get to maintain more power but not without significant cost.  Last year I mentioned the book, Men’s Will to Hurt by  Joseph Kuypers.  The author discusses patriarchy from the perspective of pleasure.  Why do men hurt women?  Because they can and because it’s enjoyable.  But men who refuse to play the game put themselves at risk as much as women.

So watching these two tanned-skinned two year olds busily digging, singing, eating, kissing, not kissing, reading and swimming throughout the week, I once again face the reality that I am but one influence in Alexi’s formative years.  I model, as frequently as I can, the responsible way to relate to other people-with gentleness, affection and firm limit setting.  But if his inner masculinity someday expresses itself in violence I know I’ll need to learn more about channelling that energy since forbidding it as a strategy won’t work.  I was touched to see him on the vacation with his tiny plastic calf, putting her to bed for a nap, stroking, kissing and making sweet high pitched whispering sounds to lull her to sleep while Emily sang “The Wheels on the Bus” to herself in the next room.  Seeing his tenderness touched me deeply and gave me hope that my tiny radical parenting choices might, in this gentle giant at least, help expand and modify what it means to be male in North America today.

All new boyby format coming in September!

Hello readers! I hope you are all having a wonderful summer.

Boyby Mama has taken a break to revise and improve the blog. Coming in September will be (insert drumroll here) weekly posts. There will still be the monthly essay, but the other weeks will feature a Mom of the Month, a relevant news story and a research tidbit pertinent to lesbian moms of sons (but of course interesting to everybody!) Tell all your friends and get ready for some serious fall fun.

 Love Gail

A Little Distraction

Let’s face it- modern life for parents, under the best of circumstances, is stressful. After putting our kids to bed after an exhausting day of teething pain, tantrums and tearing around the house after our little explorers, most of us with toddlers want nothing more than to sink into another reality via the tv, the internet, or a pint of Ben ‘n Jerry’s. Yes, folks, it’s our dear friend, distraction. Now, don’t get me wrong-I’m right in there, holding the spoon with the best of them. For me, the level of exhaustion from parenting rivals being on the road for six months, performing a badly written production of The Odyssey seven days a week. Don’t ask how I know that. But in spite of my longing for and engaging in distraction, I find it concerning as a strategy. Last week, I had two conversations about distraction that were, for me, little red flags. The first discussion was with a male friend who has raised three children. Alexi, Lucie and I were visiting him and his wife when, at one point, our boyby fell down and was crying due to a nasty bump on the head. My friend immediately directed Alexi’s attention to a new book they had bought for him and told us that distraction was the primary technique he used raising his own children. “Works every time,” he said, watching Alexi, sans tears, immersing himself in the watercolor pictures of When a Fly Flew In. The second conversation was with a good friend who received some shocking news about a family member. She was describing her process of trying to move through life in as normal a way as possible; she would try distracting herself with her work or with social time but a few times a day she would feel a wave of emotion building up and uncontrollable tears would fill her eyes...after which it would stop and she would be able to distract herself again. Ironically, my parental intentions this week have to do with remembering to use precisely this technique. I was convinced by its sometime usefulness after reading in several books that, because toddlers don’t understand cause and effect, the only real way to discipline without power struggles (which have only temporary effectiveness and erode the complicity between parent and child) is to create a desire in the child to want to do something else, something that you want them to do. In other words, distraction. As an activist, I’ve been critical of many aspects of modern western life. But I think I find this strategy as a blanket solution to negative emotions among the most worrisome. I understand it, from a socioeconomic point of view: the highest value in our culture is work (wage earning work, of course) and anything that keeps us from that must be eradicated if possible or controlled if not. The experience of what our society calls “negative emotions” certainly falls into this category. Giving expression to sadness, anger, fear or other emotions make us less able to continue giving all of our energies to production. This of course has special significance for boys and men, whose energies need to be marshalled for the particular stamina required in warfare. Basic training for the military consists of drills designed specifically to disconnect the soldiers from their individual experiences, especially pain and suffering of all kinds, so they can continue to follow orders under atrocious conditions. The industrial military complex can then function as the well oiled machine the US has today. What other functions does distraction serve? When educated citizens are too exhausted to pay attention to much outside of their families and jobs, social injustices can persist. People are much less likely to be aware of what governments and corporations are actually doing and, in current times of environmental crisis, this is alarmingly costly. How can social movements gain momentum, much less exist, without citizens to join them and propel them forward? On a microcosmic level, distraction as a primary strategy is, I believe, also very costly. When I start to lose touch with my body and its messages, I become far more likely to become injured or sick. If I’m distracted, I’m much less likely to notice things that bother me, things that I might want to change, or things my partner or child might need that I could be helpful with. Many accidents happen because drivers are exhausted, spaced out or, more recently, distracted by cell phone conversations or other activities. When I see Alexi fall down and cry, my new impulse is simply to allow him to be, and to be with him wherever he is. I want him to know when he hurts, and that having feelings, even negative ones, is natural and healthy. Unlike myself, I would like him to be strongly in touch with his physical, emotional, and psychological self, accepting of all of who he is and easy about expressing his feelings. Unlike many people who buy into distraction, I don’t believe this is coddling nor do I believe it makes crybabies out of children. One has only to read John Gottman (other researchers have done this work but I haven’t read them yet) and his research on emotional intelligence and emotion coaching, based on over a decade of highly disciplined and in my eyes convincing research. This body of work shows us that when parents simply acknowledge their children’s emotions, support them through the expression thereof, and later help them problem solve the issues that led to the emotion, the kids do better on every level. If every time a child has a “negative” (read human) emotion he is distracted, he will internalize the message that this is how he is to respond when feelings come up; I hate thinking of the types of distraction Alexi might use later using (computer games, drugs, daredevil adrenaline producing behavior, just to name a few.) This morning, Alexi was going for my cell phone-again (the fifth time today). Instead of making my voice even more stern or angry, admonishing him or grabbing the phone from his maple syrup covered paw (sigh), I pointed out the window and exclaimed, “Hey, Lexi, look-it’s the GARBAGE TRUCK!!!” He ran towards the window and I gently removed the phone from his grasp. I guess the tricky part about all life is learning to live in the gray areas. Back to the drawing board...

Mothering

Grab a pen and paper. Now, think of the word MOTHER. Write down the first three words that come to your mind, like that word association game. Did you do it? Good! What were they? Mine were cookies, love, nurturing, lap and unconditional. Now, if you were to do the same exercise but instead of MOTHER it was MY MOTHER, your list might look different. It might also look different if it was ME AS A MOTHER. I know that associations with both of those would be completely different for me. As a lesbian, I’ve been thinking about, considering and reconsidering various identities since I was old enough to have a crush on another woman. I’ve gone through various stages when it felt absolutely imperative to adopt a particular identity, like “bisexual,” and during those stages it was critical for me to choose the most truthful word -not necessarily the one I felt most drawn to. Ironically, this type of identification often left me feeling lonely and misunderstood. There were other periods, like the one I’m living now, when I felt more casual about identity. The categories, for me, are vague and I float in and out of them, up and down the continuum, as I float down life’s current. Being understood doesn’t feel very important these days, although allowing all aspects of my self to live and breathe and feels crucial. Being a parent is one such example. Yes, I am technically a mother, but because my son has two women as parents, the whole mommy/daddy/role thing has been turned upside down on its head. There are moments I feel very much a mother, others a father, still others a coach and every now and then simply a fellow human being, enjoying the ride that is Alexi’s childhood. Some lesbians embrace the butch and femme roles, which divide the relating along gender lines. This has never been my style, preferring to experience gender as more of a series of experiences than a fixed point. So my new point of reference is no longer “mother” as a noun, but “mother” as a verb. I think anybody can mother, even men; this flexibility makes it an incredibly liberating paradigm shift. Because of being estranged from my own mother, I’ve encouraged myself to figure out what good “mothering” is, who I see doing it, and how I can integrate those inspiring skill sets. I don’t exactly know the precise definition of “to mother;” it has something to do with the act of caring for somebody or something, being able to nurture a person’s process, moment by moment, or even just simple acts of kindness done for no other reason but the pleasure of providing and serving. Yesterday’s day, a day to honor those who mother, brought an amazing woman to my mind. This woman is neither my mother nor my child, yet she has been a fantastic role model to me, showing what miracles that committed mothering can produce. My dear friend, I’ll call her “Elizabeth” to protect her privacy, is this woman. Elizabeth and I met as colleagues at the local college, where she still works, when both of us were single and longing for partners and families. One of my favorite memories was when Elizabeth and her dog, Bella, slept over at my apartment in Montpelier with me and my cat, Lizzy, after a late meeting. The four of us piled onto my blue futon and gabbed about the difficulties of being single (the animals contributed by nodding sagely and occasionally licking themselves in agreement). Elizabeth had recently bought her first house and she was grieving the empty space where she had imagined a partner would be standing. At this point in my life, I didn’t realize all of the mothering Elizabeth had done to this point, as a social worker, as a teacher, and as a committed friend. Fast forward ten years and there is Elizabeth, now with husband, Andrew, and 2 pre-teenage stepdaughters, working and playing hard at the family game. Being a stepmother is possibly one of the most challenging contexts for mothering; it was seeing Elizabeth in action in this parenting role that I began to fully see the profound gifts she offers the world around her. Her mothering is full of daily intimacies-reading to and with her girls each night, helping them with homework and instrument practice, shopping for clothing, tucking them into bed and kissing them goodnight, and all of the interactions that happen in and around these ordinary events. She brings gritty honesty and self-reflection to her mothering, determined to own her part of the responsibility in any difficult situation, including those with her stepdaughters. Elizabeth takes seriously her responsibility as a US and world citizen, broadening her mothering beyond the walls of her home, into her work with students and colleagues at the college, her participation in the progressive party, her connections with neighbors, and each and every friendship and family relationship she values. Elizabeth has a fabulous sense of humor and almost always manages to find the funny in her relationship challenges, at least when conveying them to me in story form. I think her mothering embodies the archetype of the warrior. This very strength is what I see Elizabeth finding, and needing, as she navigates the recent loss of her own mother, after a very short battle with cancer. Reading the email updates Elizabeth would lovingly write about her mother’s dying, with touching detail and complexity, I realized that once again, Elizabeth was mothering those around her on so many levels-herself, her mother, her siblings, her mother’s friends, the medical staff involved in her mother’s care, and of course her husband and stepdaughters. It is my hope that Elizabeth will mother herself in the same incredible way she has devoted she has devoted herself to those around her. When I struggle in my own life, when those moments or days arrive when mothering of any kind seems way too difficult for me to manage, I think about Elizabeth. I think of her recounting her relationship struggles to me with so much humor, such compassion for herself and others. I think about her deep connection with her dog, and all the respect she brings to this animal who came from an abusive home and whom Elizabeth adopted from the SPCA. I think about her determination to show up to each situation she meets in her life, to clearly say no to distraction and diversion, to live with an open heart, accepting all the emotions and baggage that come with that openness, and welcoming all the love and connection that is the result. It is my hope that this inspiration, along with the inspiration of other mothering mentors, will continue to help me learn to mother better and better, to the benefit of Alexi, Lucie and the world beyond the walls of my home, the world that includes my dear friends, my family, my neighbors and indeed the whole world with which I have contact. Now-grab that pen and paper again. Write down the first five words that come to your mind when you think of the verb, “to mother.” If you would like to send me yours, I will post those I receive.

Parents Canada article

Hey faithful readers,

Check out my story on children from same sex parents in the national magazine, "Parents Canada!" If you have comments please feel free to write.

http://www.parentscanada.com/family-life/sex-and-relationships/same-sex-parents-the-kids-are-all-right.aspx