Yep, you read that right. I suck as a parent.

In October, I was going through that breathing issues crap. At the same point, we were trying to get Luna into more ice skating lessons. She was planning to meet with a coach on Tuesday afternoons, after school. Suddenly, I realized we needed more than the school after care. I managed to hire an afterschool sitter/driver.

Our interview was the day after I had the anaphylatic reaction to contrast dye. I was very wiped out and resting on our couch. It was also the start of Snowtober. She was prompt, as her references indicated she would be, and she was a tad older than I expected. I would say she was in her late 50s. She was very polite and straight forward. C had raised 5 children, one who was premature and had learning disabilities, and was looking for this sort of part time work. She had firm expectations on the kids. I was concerned about her being too firm, so we tried to lay out a good routine.

From the start, both girls challenged her. There have been days when I find out that Soleil totally ignored her and left trash on the ground just to see what C would do. This is behavior that I don’t condone, but I think we may have contributed.

You see, I was raised in a Christian household. Dr. Jay was raised in a Jewish household. Okay, no big deal, right? Well, no. Christians are raised to believe. You follow the rules. You listen to authority, especially the big guy. You don’t question what the Bible teaches, you adapt your life to Christianity. Judaism? Well now, that is different. Some Jewish heroes question G-d. By questioning, you learn. Don’t follow blindly. Read and interpret the Torah. Take a Torah reading and 3 Jews and you have 3 different interpretations. Question, think, reason, fit. Very different.

We are raising our girls to think, question and reason. I am trying very hard to instill respect. Really really really. I was recently visiting another blogger. I made a comment about respectful arguing. The daughter looked at me and asked how you do that. So I explained that just because a rule is there by us, the parents, we do allow the girls to respectfully argue the rule. An example would be “No feet on the table”. Soleil’s arguments have been, “Mom, I am much more comfortable with putting my feet up when I eat” My argument back is “Soleil, feet pick up a ton of germs, some kids (LUNA’s) feet smell, and it is not socially acceptable to put your feet on the table.” I enforce the rule, but I explain it. The daughter stopped and thought about this. When her mom told her to not put her feet on the chair, the first reaction was a whine. Then the daughter stopped and said “Wait, I’m going to argue nicely. Mom, I like my feet on the chair. Can I stay this way?” Her mom laughed and said no because it could ruin the chair, but then we both praised her for not just whining, but instead thinking through the problem. I am not sure my friend appreciated my view, because authority starts to diminish with questioning.

We allow questioning. Our parents claim “everything is a negotiation.” Our response is “No, when they try to negotiate, the answer can be no, you do it our way.” I find many adults find questioning authority to be disrespectful. I don’t. I feel you can respectfully question authority. You need to question the request or order, not the person. When you get the explanation, you can’t answer with “that’s stupid” and you do need to stop and follow through if the person says so. We’ve done this multiple times with the girls. It’s hard and not consistent. It means that sometimes you change your mind and other times you need to say no.

I got an email from our sitter last night. The line that hurt was from her about the girls:

I am not viewed as an authority figure – at best, I am viewed as a peer – at worst, I am viewed as a servant.

Dr. Jay reminded me that C is quite old school and would assume any questioning of authority is an affront, but still, it hurt and my parenting feels questioned.

This is why I suck as a parent. It’s hard to raise our children to think and question, yet be respectful at the same time. I need to work on the respect more. Part of this is also school. We’ve had a rough year with Soleil in school with respecting her teacher. This is just further evidence that we need to stress respect.

How do you teach respect in your house?

She doesn’t exist. That Picture Perfect Kid. I’ve never seen her. I’ve hoped and looked, but the damn truth is, all of our kids have flaws. And we all have flaws and the world has flaws.

This weekend, Soleil found an old drawing from a once friend. It showed that her friend had a broken heart and Soleil was angry and her friend said "I love you even if you hate me. Guess Who?". It was drawn 2 years ago. Her friend is also a gifted child. She falls into the twice exceptional category which means she is gifted, and has ADHD (gifted with a learning disability).  This makes it hard for Soleil. She wants to be friends with this girl, but the girl is emotionally younger than Soleil. She is as quirky as Soleil is, but in different ways.

I’ll put the honest truth out here. It’s raw and painful. Soleil has been downright mean to this girl. Soleil finally acknowledged this Sunday night when I returned from my trip. She cried for almost a half hour. We talked and discussed and the truths came out. The girl doesn’t always give Soleil the space she needs, but Soleil sometimes doesn’t want to hang with her because she’s afraid this will lower her social standing.

THIS IS 3rd GRADE FOLKS! IN 3RD FUCKING GRADE, they already care about being the popular one. Dr. Jay and I were on the "everybody knows us, but only a few want to be friends" groups in school. We also were guilty of not wanting to hang with friends that made us look "uncool". We wanted to be with the popular ones, but we’ve grown up.

While I snuggled my really getting big 8.5 year old, Dr. Jay drew a bell curve. We talked about what is happiness, what is friendship and what makes a person successful. We marked where Soleil was on that graph in terms of social standing, where Dr. Jay and I were and where her friend was. We looked at the populations that she can draw friends from. I laid it out for her that "You will NEVER be the most popular kid in school. You will be known by everybody. You will have friends. But NEVER expect to be the popular one because THAT IS NOT WHO YOU ARE." It hurt to say that, but it is true. Soleil will have her group of friends, she will be in the geek group, but she won’t be in the queen bee group.

Then the ugly part came. I am making her apologize to her former(?) friend. I talked to the mom today and explained what we were doing. I explained how I don’t want to have a mean girl. How the apology was for both girls, to help Soleil get it off her chest and to let the other girl know that what Soleil did was not okay. From here, Soleil has to make a choice: Does she want to be friends or not with this girl. If yes, they have to work it slowly. If no, she still needs to be kind.

I hate parenting. I want it to be easy. I want my kids to be healthy, happy and have the lots of friends. I’d like a million dollars while I’m at it and a chef and a maid. But that doesn’t happen. So the next best thing I can do is help my girls understand the social pecking order, where they fit in and when to stop and say "NO. This is NOT okay to do." Especially if they are the ones doing the mean girl tricks.

Since she was born, Luna has been my little jokester. While Dr. Jay and Soleil have birthdays on the 23rd of certain months, Luna waited until the 24th, screwing up everybody in my family as to which date is her birthday. She was born silent: breathing, looking around, checking out the place, but so silent that I freaked that she was not breathing. She would take several 10 minute catnaps and 1 long nap a day as an infant. I literally set a clock by her. She wanted to always be held and I allowed as much as I could.

She learned the power of her awesome cuteness in daycare. She could wrap anyone around her finger with her cute little smile and those eyes that just say "I am adorably cute". She only got in trouble when she bit people. And she would only scream with me and Dr. Jay.

Now, she is doing her slacker work. She is very bright. In some ways, she is far brighter than Soleil, but she has this one horrible personality trait: She doesn’t want people to know what she knows. She hides her skills from her teachers. She doesn’t try very hard because she thinks she knows it already. Her kindergarten teacher was warned, we tried…but Luna won the day. Over the summer, she told me that school was boring.

We started first grade differently. We explained to her teacher how Luna can manipulate people. How she pretends what she knows, how she is the joker. I was dissappointed in her first trimester assessment, not that she was doing poorly, but that it was clear she was not applying herself. That made me sad. We have tried and tried to impress this on her.

Her last skating competition went, poorly. Basically? She stunk and she knew it. She wasn’t smooth, she faultered and she was not confident. She ended 4th out of 4. Of course, she still got a medal, but she knew it wasn’t her best. This week, another round of reality hit her.

I was helping with her homework when I noticed her teacher had written that Luna needs to study her sight words more. I asked Luna about this and she said it was "too easy" and "we don’t need to do them everyday". Now with Soleil, we truely didn’t need to do them everyday. But now I paid attention. I had Luna read them and sure enough, she was having trouble with the words that don’t follow basic phonic rules (Where, there…). I wrote an email to her teacher discussing her lack of reading the keys and that we (the parents) would work more with her.

That’s when I found out that she’s been rolling her eyes at the teacher, and zoning out during the lessons. Is she really bored? I don’t know, but I told her that if she doesn’t show that she knows the stuff, she will get herself behind in class. And the eyerolls? "I just happened to be looking at the ceiling when she was talking to me." HA!

The best that Jay and I can determine is this: she’s terrified of failure. It’s one thing to be the class clown and fall and get a laugh. It’s another thing to try to do the right thing and fall. Jay thinks it is really the latter that is worrying her. I explained that we want Luna best. Not the best grades, not the best in the class, not better than the worse kid, HER best.

She is very upset because I have put her reading above all other things right now…she’s not happy, but if we don’t teach her the importance of TRYING, I am afriad she will simply sit back and not get anywhere…

Thoughts?