Leading Mama

Are You Linked In?

Are you LinkedIn? Is your face in the “book?” (FaceBook, that is.)  Do you Yahoo!? Got space on MySpace? Blogspot? CafeMom?

 

As I’ve been updating my networking site profiles and website information, I find myself waxing a bit nostalgic. Wasn’t business better when we stopped by colleagues’ or competitors’ offices, made phone calls, had lunch? Weren’t families better when we lived up the road from Grandma’s house and she didn’t have to watch the kiddos grow up via webcam?

 

Business banter loves the global marketplace. You can work on both coasts simultaneously, outsource your IT operations to Asia, and sell to multiple markets without leaving your home office. Suddenly suppliers’ competition skyrockets and it feels like everyone is a potential customer.

As families become more mobile and move further from their extended kin, moms and dads go global, too. We join parenting groups (I love mine!), make playdates, search for sitters online using giant databases of profiles (check out sittercity.com to see what I mean). Perhaps it has always been the case that “It Takes a Village” to raise a child, but the village is virtual these days.

 

I can’t help but wonder if all this social networking hasn’t had a paradoxical effect. We’re more connected than ever and yet we’re lonelier. We spend increasing amounts of time crafting our “selves” online (personal or professional profiles, websites, blogs). Yet our identities feel less authentic, our brands less compelling. It’s hard to tell what is real and what is creative fiction.

 

Interviewers for the General Social Survey asked people the following question:

 

“From time to time, most people discuss important matters with other people. Looking back over the last six months, who are the people with whom you have discussed matters important to you?” List their first names or initials.

 

Stop and answer this on scratch paper before you read on…

Come on, humor me and answer it.

 

The result? The number of close confidants reported has dropped nearly one third, from 2.94 to 2.08 in the last 20 years. The drop is depressing, but the absolute number is sadder still. In the year 2004, the average person said they discussed important matters with only 2 people?! What kind of social networking is that?

 

Social connections are important stress busters and they’re still the way business gets done. So before you update that profile, take a few minutes to invite a friend or coworker to lunch. Oh, and don’t forget to call your mom.

Just Add Coffee

A psychologist and a veterinarian walk into a bar. A coffee bar. The psychologist orders a grande decaf nonfat latte. The veterinarian calls for a tall, half-caf nonfat mocha, no whip, with foam. Ahh. How I wish it were true.

I confess: I'm the psychologist. And the veterinarian is my best friend, Kirstin. We've been separated from each other (and from our coffee-centric playdates) for several months now. Our husbands' work moved our families across the country this summer, but not to the same place. Alas, I miss my friend.

Fortunately, the world is shrinking. Those ubiquitous electronic leashes (cell phones) we all resent make a Starbuck's double shot playdate possible even across the miles. And this mom thinks that's fantastic.

I called Kirstin yesterday to hear her sunny voice and get some critical mission support. She asked about the ongoing struggle to get my son comfortable with the kid's club at the gym. I know she understands the magnitude of this struggle -- she went through it with her daugher only last month. I explained I've been trying to reinforce the idea that "the kid's club is a great place to go" by rewarding my son with a smoothie or some outdoor playtime together after we leave the gym. Kirstin the veterinarian's response: "If he was a dog I would say you should make as little fuss about the reunion as you can. You don't want him to see a sharp contrast between the time when he is with you and the time when you're away."

Hmm. Good point.

Of course, my son is not a dog. But Kirstin the veterinarian's advice was spot on. By rewarding my son with a post-kid's club smoothie, I was reinforcing the  idea "time with Mommy is way more fun than time away from Mommy." How could I not see this? Perhaps the post-workout reward also made me feel better about leaving my son in tears while I had some "mommy" time. If I gave him something extra I could ease a little bit of the guilt. Maybe motherhood requires some delusion.

As a psychologist, it's a bit embarassing to admit you get your best parenting advice from your veterinarian. Even if she is your best friend and even if she offers the advice over a half-caf nonfat mocha with no whip, just foam.   

Are You My Monkey?

    In the classic children's book entitled "Are You My Mother?" a baby bird who hatched while his mother was away asks a dog, a cow, and even an airplane "Are You My Mother?" As a mom, I appreciate the sweet repetition in the story. I don't even mind reading it (over and over) to my son. But when life imitates literature, I get a little bit crazy. 

    Recently my son has become an intensely anxious little mama's boy. Don't get me wrong, he has ALWAYS been a mama's boy -- after all, his dad was gone on deployment for the first 13 months of his life. But in the last 10 days, my son started clinging like a monkey. One of Harry Harlow's monkeys, to be exact. (Remember from Intro Psych that Harlow studied attachment in baby rhesus monkeys raised with wire or cloth-covered surrogate mothers. His monkey subjects became fearful and timid, not wanting to try new things.)

   

  My previously courageous little monkey freaks out if I leave the room. He follows me everywhere, like a dog expecting a treat. When I take him to the gym, he sits down in the doorway and wails. I coax and cajole him all the way to the play room, and then I leave him. He curls up on the floor, head in his hands, and sobs. Just like Harlow's baby monkeys. Unlike those monkeys, as I leave the room a caregiver picks him up and cuddles him, ensuring him I'll be back.

    This is enough to give me a complex. I wonder what turned my son from an adventurous, sociable flirt into a needy, anxious little monkey? Maybe the enormous changes in our lives this spring/summer have finally caught up with us. Maybe my son is just going through a phase (but at almost 18 months he seems a bit old for stranger anxiety). I'll never know.

    What I do know is he's MY little monkey. And if I can't get to the gym for a workout, I'll do my leg extensions with a 25-lb. toddler anxiously clinging to my leg. And that will be workout enough.    

Growing Up is for Grownups, Too

        When you're young, everyone asks you what you want to be when you grow up. I wanted to be a marine biologist, or a journalist, or a lawyer. Maybe you wanted to be a firefighter, or a baseball legend, or an astronaut.

    And then you grow up, and everyone stops asking what you want to be. After all, you already have a job, a spouse, a family. You're connected to a circle of friends and participate in your community. How much more grown up can you get, right?

    My brain started munching on this question the other day when I was talking with my mom on the phone. I explained my recent adventures into freelance writing and my desire to share the psychology of personality and leadership with everymoms (and dads) everywhere. My enthusiasm bubbled as I talked 90-miles-per-minute about my goals and what I have learned so far.

(NOTE: People who know me will have no trouble visualizing this. I am a fast talker. A very fast talker. From the day I started talking, my parents had trouble getting a word in edgewise. Watching me squeeze information into the last 5 minutes of an Intro Psych lecture is a lot like watching 27 clowns squeeze into a Volkswagon Beetle. You get the point.)

    When I stopped to take a breath, my mom asked something like "So are you going to be a hard ass like Dr. Phil or Dr. Laura or Suze Orman?" (No, of course she didn't say hard ass. My mom would NEVER say hard ass. But that's how I heard it.) 

Her question stopped my talking and started me thinking. Hm. Hmm. Hmmm.

What a fabulous question!

    But did I have an answer? Not really. Not yet. As a 38-year-old beginning writer I am still "finding my voice," as they say. (I've been speaking to college students and business clients for more than 10 years now, but I don't really think of myself as "Dr. Heidi.") So mom's question got me thinking that maybe we all need to stop once in a while and ask ourselves "WHO do I want to be when I grow up?" Of course I don't mean I want to be someone else. But I want to be someone better than the me I am now.

I may be grown up, but I'm still growing! 

    Essentially, mom was asking what tone I want to take with my audience. After some thought, my preliminary answer goes something like this:

• I want to write with the humor and warmth of a best friend
• I want to offer knowledge with the patience of a skilled teacher
• I want to glean everday insights and share them so others can see the lessons they're living, too

I'm glad I'm not too grown up to keep growing. Are you? 

Big Scary World

As I sit down at the desk, I hear my husband ask our son "hey, whaddya have?" I imagine Carson (17 months) is running around in his living-room play area, obviously chewing on something. This happens often. My stepdaughter says, "is that a Cheerio? Gross...how old is it?" And my husband replies casually, "it's better than a dog kibble...sometimes he eats the dog kibble."

I laugh to myself. Because it's true. Sometimes he eats dog kibble. And it won't kill him.

The adventure of parenting is a lot like going on vacation to a remote tropical paradise -- it's everything you've ever dreamed of and yet you're scared to death of what could go wrong. New parent panic is epic. What if she rolls under her crib bumper and suffocates? What if he chokes on the wheel from a toy car? What superbug will she catch at daycare? Will his required immunizations cause autism?  Does he get enough sleep? Does she drink too much juice?

Enough already.

As a mother, I am sure parenting is the most important job I've ever had. I love my son more than I ever knew I could love someone. From the moment they placed his slippery body on my chest in the delivery room, I felt an overwhelming responsibility for his welfare. As soon as I was allowed, I waddled down the hall from my postpartum room to the infant nursery where he stayed because he was breathing a bit too fast at birth.  I curled his tiny fingers around mine and it brought tears to my eyes.

When I was expecting, I read a book entitled "Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety" by Judith Warner. Her sociological portrait of modern motherhood rocked my mommy-to-be fantasies. Could it really be that modern moms are so overwhelmed and under-supported that the joy is lost? Are moms so intensely competitive with one another that they've lost sight of what really matters?

Perhaps.

Trying to have it all, do it all, be it all, is exhausting. And exhaustion heightens anxiety. Someone once said "it's a mother's job to worry." But although I worry more than I did before I was a mom, I don't buy it.

I'd say it's a mother's job to comfort. It's a mother's job to advocate fiercely. It's a mother's job to see a child's potential and to provide opportunities for growth. It's a mother's job to create a world in which other mothers can do the same.

So I focus on my son's gorgeous smile, his delight in removing 750 Q-tips from their container, and the mac-n-cheese hairdo he created last week that required a post-lunch bath. I can't be weighted down with worries and keep these images in mind simultaneously. It's not possible. The joys of childhood kick the worries of motherhood's butt every time. And that is how it should be.

Oh, the Places You Will Go

    I enjoy reading many kinds of books, but "adventure non-fiction" is a favorite genre. From childhood, I've been attracted to tales of explorers of land and sea. Perhaps it started with Laura Ingalls Wilder's accounts of crossing vast prairies in covered wagons. My mom used to read to me each night from the "Little House" books. I read them so well and often that I felt like part of the Ingalls family.

    More recently I've been enchanted by tales of the Arctic explorations (Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing) and by dangerously deep wreck dives off the New Jersey coastline (Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II by Robert Kurson). Memoirs of a boy soldier in Sierra Leone (A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah) and of Everest-expeditions Into Thin Air and a journey Into the Wild of Alaska steal my breath and my heart at the same time. What attracts me to these stories of adventure is not a desire to travel vicariously to faraway lands. I am compelled by adventure non-fiction because it impresses on me time and again the awareness that risk taking is crucial to a life of leadership.

    Risk taking gets a bad rap. I mean, the term "risk taking" itself focuses on the negative (risk). Why not call it "possibility taking" or "opportunity taking" instead? Is it because we don't want to encourage people (ourselves or others) to break out and (gasp!) try something NEW? If we all tried something new, the world would be less predictable, less stable, less like it is and more like we make it. Hmm. Sounds good to me.

    Where would a thoughtful bout of "possibility taking"  lead you? Who knows. What I do know is you never know unless you commit to risk. Reflect on  W. H. Murray's words in The Scottish Himalaya Expedition (1951) and then lead on.

"This may sound too simple, but is great in consequence. Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth - the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans - that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets:

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!'"

A Dog's Life

These days I am struggling with the decision of when to say goodbye to my best-dog-friend, Houston. After 13 years of companionship, it is hard to face the reality that his health is declining, his senses are failing, and he paces anxiously in the night, looking for a comfortable spot to sleep. Twice each night (or more), I carry him down three flights of creaky, wooden stairs to the back yard where he relieves his bladder, only to carry him back up to our room where the  search for a cozy corner begins anew. He refuses to sleep downstairs, away from his pack. And I like sleeping near him, too.

Nights with Houston are exhausting. I worry that he hurts and fear he will wake my sleeping toddler or husband. I listen to him breathe his dog dreams. When he paces, I toss and turn. I get out of bed bleary-eyed and coffee-craving, not having slept more than 3 hours at a stretch. Often I sleep in more than one place (bedroom, spare room, family room) trying to keep peace for everyone. Houston gets up in the morning when I lift him from his post and carry him down for breakfast. After eating his kibble, he conducts a hopeful and diligent patrol of Area C -- the area under my son Carson's high chair -- where he feasts on bits of scrambled egg, pancake, and Cheerios. His patrol concluded, he settles in the posh dog bed beneath my desk and snoozes while I write.

That's an old dog's life, I guess.

But is it a quality life?

And who am I to judge?

"Quality of life" is as subjective as it gets.  My stay-at-home military mom's "play-cook-clean-play, work-when-I-can, move-when-the-Air-Force-says-move" kind of life is not one others might choose. Some days I miss the structure and social stimulation of professional work outside these walls. Right now, my work group consists of a curiously busy toddler who says "No, no, no" all day as he rearranges the kitchen, the laundry, or my desktop, and an aged dog who follows me everywhere, whining softly if he is left behind as I go upstairs or down. We make quite a team.

So when will I say goodbye to faithful Houston? I can't say. I thought it would be this week. I thought it was time. His balance is poor and he falls down sometimes. But his attitude is so sunny, his circumstances don't seem to matter much. He is choosing to live as fully as he can given his limitations and I can't take that away from him.

It Is (So Much More Than) What It Is

"It Is What It Is."

If you ask me, it's a sad sign of our times that at every turn, someone utters "It Is What It Is." In fact, this catch-phrase has such cultural cache that the acronym "IIwII" is enough to get the point across. If you doubt it's gone this far, do a quick Google search for "it is what it is" and you'll find a Chicago rock band, a smooth jazz album (from the band Impromp2), myriad MySpace pages, and opportunities to buy "It Is" t-shirts and totebags!

You may be wondering why this has me in such a lather. After all, "It is What It Is" seems like nothing more than a simple statement of the obvious. The fact of the matter is, well, a fact of the matter. But this seemingly innocuous phrase expresses an attitude of defiance, of resignation, of disengagement that is not just unhealthy, it's toxic. See what I mean. 

• Your favorite sports team loses the game? IIwII.
• Didn't get the award? the promotion? the raise? IIwII.
• You learn that you or a close friend or family member have a serious health problem? IIwII.
• The bank forcloses on your mortgage, leaving you financially devastated and homeless? IIwII.
• You're called to the boss's office to answer for a bad business decision you made? IIwII.
• Your spouse decides divorce is the answer to years of poor communication and dwindling intimacy? IIwII.

Depressing, right?

The real simple truth is "It Is What It Is" keeps us down, individually and collectively. It excuses us responsibility for our actions and outcomes, and prevents us from constructively responding to challenges we face.

To grow and develop, we must embrace and embody a different defiance. We must believe that "It Isn't What It Is." Rather, "It Is What We Make It." "It Is What We Make It" exposes new opportunities, inspires action, and encourages persistence. As individuals, families, and organizations, "It Is What We Make It" makes us bigger, better, bolder than we are. And that's what a slogan should do.

Followers can continue to live with "It Is What It Is." Leaders must live up to "It Is What We Make It."