Black and White

It’s been a while since my last blog, and there have been so many things on my mind that I have sorted through.

For instance, what do you do when your four-year-old won’t sleep through the night and there are no answers as to why? And you have tried practically everything?

What do you when you third grader makes a statement that he hates school because he’s tired of the standardized testing, worksheets, and that he’s seen as a score?

What do you do when you stand up for a cause you believe in concerning a medicine treatment, but don’t even get a fair chance, and you are defeated and cannot do anything about it? Oh, and it’s for your child, not you.

I wish these were hypothetical questions, but they aren’t. These are things that come with life… Life as a parent.

Since all three questions pertain to my boys, I wish I had answers. I wish I could wave a magic wand and make it all better. Jude would sleep well, and not struggle throughout the night. Jacob would love school, get the medicine he needs at it, and be valued for the sweet, funny, sometimes sneaky kid that he is.

Parenting is hard and is never as black and white as I once naively thought.

When the boys were really young, and needed comforting, I could simply cuddle them in a swaying rock, and tell them that all their worries were gone. These days, it’s not quite that simple.

And it’s definitely not black and white.

Jude’s Silent Tears

My inquisitive Jude has been known to throw countless meltdowns the past year. (Unless you ask his public-school preschool teachers, then they swear he’s calm.) But everyone else – well, we all see the same things. Jude has meltdowns. 80% of them are communication struggles, 15% is because he doesn’t get his way, and 5% is from getting injured. So, we’re accustomed to Jude’s cries, regardless of the reasons.

On the other hand, we can say with confidence that Jude is a happy child. For all that he has been through, and for the communication struggles he has, he loves to sing, dance, give hugs, and act goofy to make people smile. His giggles resonate throughout the house, and his little bottom likes to be parked near us, or on our laps as we work on lesson plans for school in the evenings.

One evening, while I was lying in bed trying to relax, both boys decided in unison that they wanted “mom time”.  Uninvited, they piled in bed with me. Eight-year-old Jacob grabbed my phone and wanted to see pictures of when he was a baby.

So, I started swiping through my phone while he laughed and commented how cute he was. (Typical Jacob – confident and proud.)

We came upon a section of my phone that held old videos. A file that I had forgotten. We watched recent videos of our family sledding (well, wiping out) in the backyard. The boys laughed with delight as we saw one where I ran into the dog, literally.

Then, onto the next video. And the next.

Eventually, we came to videos of Jacob as a toddler. We watched in wonder as Jacob sang and danced at age 2, read a book at age 3, and carried on a HUGE conversation about awaiting the arrival of his baby brother at the age of 4.

I was in Nostalgia Heaven. My heart swelled with joy and love as I gave Jacob an extra squeeze. He ecstatically commentated throughout the videos.

I realized Jude was abnormally quiet, so I glance over to my right to see if he was still by my side. He was. He was lying there, soaked in silent tears.

Tears streamed down his face, and he tried to catch his breath through the frowned corners of his little mouth.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, concerned.

He didn’t even try to answer.

I had never seen Jude like this. Up to this moment, I was used to loud, dramatic waterworks, not gushes of silent tears that turned his cheeks into puddles, and his eyes into little blue pools of sadness.

I asked if he was hurt.

He shook his head, “no”.

Are you feel sick?

Headshake “no”.

Are you sad?

Headshake “yes”.

I asked a few more questions until I got all headshakes “yes”.

I’ll never forget the feeling that tugged at my heart as a quickly pieced together the mystery of Jude’s silent tears.

He had just watched a video of Brother as a preschooler. Jacob had commented a few times that he couldn’t believe what silly conversations he had when he was four. In symbols, and signs, Jude reminded me that he was four now.  A load of bricks fell onto my lungs as I took a slow breath. Jude was sad that he could not talk like his brother could at the same age. Well, he was beyond sad. He didn’t have the words, both figuratively and literally to express his sadness. He didn’t even make sounds. He just lied there, as silent tears flowed. And my, how they flowed!

What was a loving, fun memory for one child, was a painful reminder to the other. And as a mom, I was in between the two boys, trying to meet both their needs and feelings at the same time. One was celebrating with me. One was seeking comfort in our bond of grief we shared.

Black and white.

Nothing about parenting in that moment was black and white. I was parenting two different boys, at two different realizations in their lives, all from the exact same video, seen in the same moment.

Of course, celebrating memories with Jacob was easy. But, I didn’t have the words for Jude. I couldn’t just cuddle and rock these cares away like I once did. This was the first time that Jude showed he realized just how difficult communicating is. I often wondered if he sometimes looked around at his peers and realized that he was not like them as they had the ability to carry on conversations. Now I knew my answer.

Heartbreaking.

Jude’s tears eventually stopped when I offered to give him a bath. I didn’t know anything else to do in that moment, so I used the fact that that boy lives for anything pertaining to being in the water. He smiled and yelled out, “Yay”, as he streaked down the hall in his birthday suit.

I don’t even know if Jude will remember the video moment, (You never know what a child’s first memory is going to be. I hope it’s not that one!)  but it was definitely one of the defining moments for me. Parenting is rarely black and white. It’s multi-colored.

It’s the grays of putting in the sweat and tears and praying for the best. It’s the hue of blue when sadness fills your heart and you don’t always know which decision is best, so you have to go with your gut. It’s the red that comes from fighting for your child’s rights, no matter what form that has taken in your life. It’s the purple of the compassion you have for wanting your child to succeed. It’s the yellow of happy days, and the green of a time when innocence is sweet.

Parenting is multi-colored. Sometimes all at once.

So what do you do when your hypothetical parenting questions are not so hypothetical anymore? You grab a paintbrush, hold onto your canvas, and watch slowly over time as your masterpiece unfolds.