Problems with parenting from a distance

I would just remind people reading this on blogger, that I am not going to be cross-posting here much longer.  My new address is over here and if you leave a comment, that is where they will be responded to.

With a great deal of excitement, I am trying to finish up as much of my classwork as I can and get everything ready to go pick up the boys this weekend.  I will only have them for a week and unfortunately it is the week that ends the summer semester, but that is just how it goes.  I have to honestly say though, that I am really not looking forward to having a rather complicated discussion with eldest.

This is not because the conversation is overly intimidating.  While it is a little bit, that doesn't bother me, especially as I have a pretty solid grasp on how such a conversation should go.  What is less than thrilling about it, is that the timing is off.  Eldest has recently been having a lot of emotional difficulties lately - has actually been having them for a while, but more recently they have become rather more frequent and have been coming at a point where he is more cognizant of them.

Unfortunately, he is also very confused by them.  Take a discussion we had a couple weeks ago:

Me:  How are you doing today?

Eldest: I'm having a bad day papa.

Me: Are you feeling sick?

Eldest: No, I don't think I feel sick.

Me:  Did you get in trouble this morning?

Eldest: No, I'm just really upset right now.

Me: What are you upset about?

Eldest:  Nothing really, I'm just upset.

Me: Are you angry upset, or sad upset?

Eldest: I forgot.

Me: Are you feeling better now then?

Eldest: No, I'm still really upset, I just don't remember if I'm mad or sad.

That was pretty much that discussion, because he had to get ready to do something with momma and youngest.  And it was most definitely not a satisfactory discussion.  Even had we been able to continue, it is really hard to discuss emotions over the phone like that.  It's hard enough with adults who, for example, might call a crisis hotline.  It is really hard when the person you are talking to is eight years old.  It's hard for him, because he needs that responsive body language and because he's talking to his dad, it is a lot easier if there is physical contact.  And it is hard for me, because without seeing his responsive body language, I am entirely dependent on his words to break it down.  Definitely not the ideal.

Of course the other problem, is that he doesn't want to spend what time he has talking to me, talking about being upset.  He wants to hear how I am doing, how school is going and what I am working on.  He wants to tell me about what he is doing, or just did, or what new and exciting invention he really wants to make.  He wants me to read to him or tell him a story about when I was an eight year old - or a story about when he was a baby.  He wants me to explain something to him, that he is wondering about - wishing, if looking it up is necessary, that he could snuggle up to me and look it up with me.

The problem with having this conversation this next week, is that it is unlikely to happen when he is actually feeling upset.  He is barely able to contain his excitement when we talk on the phone at this point.  He is very unlikely to have any significant episodes of being upset, at least not early in the week.  And later, when he is feeling upset, knowing he will have to go back to TN before very long, he is not going to have any confusion about sad or mad.  When there is a palpable, concrete reason for him to be upset, he has no problem distinguishing - mainly because context makes it pretty clear.  So that won't help us in the context of having this discussion.

That is the crux of the problem.  These are conversations that really need to happen in the moment.  It is a lot like punishing a child for misbehavior, several hours after they misbehave.  It is pretty ineffectual and takes a lot of work to make it work.  Even then there are no guarantees.  About the only thing that I have going for me here, is that eldest has been talking about this issue with his therapist.  So we will have at least something to work from, tenuous as that will be.  But any which way we look at it, it is not going to be easy to deal with.  While I am no stranger to having complicated and difficult discussions with eldest, until he was taken 600 miles away, I was always able to deal with complicated discussions at, or close to the time they were relevant. 

This is important and it is coming at a time when I am not in the best form for dealing with it.  As eldest has grown, he has been inexorably moving away from being quite the momma's boy he once was, to increasingly looking to me for certain types of support.  That isn't to say that he is ignoring his mother altogether, just that he seems to be thinking that a lot of problems should be dealt with by me.  While I doubt he will ever be focused on gender the way most boys were when I was growing up, he has definitely become increasingly aware of it - and increasingly focused on me for emotional support and for understanding his emotions.

Ironically, I have been dealing with a severe bout of depression (when overall, life is actually pretty fucking good) and a new medication and don't have the best grasp on my own emotional content at the moment.  But that doesn't matter in the scheme of things, because kids can't wait for their parents to be ready to help them face their problems.  They need us when they need us - and that is that.  That is also probably why we fuck up so often, we don't have the luxury of waiting until we've got it all figured out, or we're feeling up to the task.  Thankfully, unless we really try, most kids are resilient enough to survive our fuckups and work it out in the end.

Another trip to see the boys

Having spent the weekend with the boys, I am completely exhausted. Not having more than as weekend each month to come see them, it is hard not to spend every waking moment possible, focused on them. Which really sucks, because it means that I don't get to spend “normal” family time with them – getting completely wiped aside. Being able to talk to them daily helps, but only so much. Spontaneous discussion of whatever topic happens to be spinning in those little developing brains is half-hazard at best.

But we had fun to say the least. Youngest was his shining, cantankerous little self. He's really getting keen on using his growing, but still sharply limited vocabulary, creating so many more opportunities for the self-righteous indignation of cranky old men. And eldest is really coming into his own now, pressing his neurological tendrils into mid-childhood, despite the many conflicts and instabilities he has faced in his eight short years. It is both sad, but also exciting to catch glimpses of the man he is trying to become.

Parenting from nearly six hundred miles away really sucks. It isn't just the pain of a papa who doesn't get to hug and kiss his boys every night – or even every week. It isn't just the pain of knowing that two boys who have no say in the matter, no control over the situation, really miss their papa so very badly. It isn't even the pain of missing so many exciting ideas and developmental stages. It really sucks to have every visit with them tainted by the sadness that in X number of hours, papa is going to get back in the car and head back along that six hundred mile journey – no more hugs and kisses until next months visit.

It is what it is though. And though it is still some months off, my time for moving down here fast approaches. As it approaches, we are figuring out some of the exciting things we will do to make our time here more interesting and worthwhile. Before we move back to Portland, there are a great many opportunities to take advantage of here – including very inexpensive options for horseback riding lessons for eldest. Things that we can do together to enrich all three of our lives, such as long hikes in the Smoky's and science oriented venues galore – not to mention a zoo membership that costs less than two visits.

In some regards I am actually looking forward to spending some time in Knoxville. There are a lot of excellent and exciting things to explore and science is a big deal down there, thanks to Oak Ridge National Labs and the industry science that has sprung up around it. I am definitely keen to get out to Portland, but will definitely take advantage of what our temporary home has to offer. Including, in a state where religious diversity is what brand of Christian you might be and atheist is a four letter word, a thriving skeptical community.

But all that is still some months off. I am back in Michigan now and very sad. I can almost feel those tiny arms around my neck, hear the frustration of my small son as he struggles to express himself clearly with his words. I can almost see my eldest sitting next to me in the van, talking about the inventions he wants to make, the things he wants us to do and what we might do to get him out of the special school. I am so fucking tired of helplessly trying to effectively parent from six hundred miles away. I am so very tired of my children's frustration at being so sharply limited in what we can do together.

This is especially problematic for eldest, who is used to being able to engage in all sorts of fun and interesting projects with me. We like being able to build stuff together, put together projects together – look up and learn stuff together. This has been a very important part of our relationship in the past - indeed when he was younger, it was a very significant portion of the time we spent together. I was working a lot and so much of our time was spent on the job (he first came to work with me when appropriate at age two) or working on our house as an exchange for rent. And youngest is getting to an age where he can partake in some of the fun.

I will continue this discussion later and intend to continue with this theme. I am really rather keen on writing more about some of the personal issues that I have let fall to the wayside. But I will probably focus this, as much as possible on single parenting – for the moment from a distance. I have rather enjoyed some of the fathering posts of other bloggers and would like to contribute some of my own. While mine will occasionally be rather dark, like this one, I am going to make sure that I intersperse them with fun posts too.

My kids are wonderful, bright and exciting people. What they have done for my life is incomprehensible to me sometimes. I am extremely lucky to have such awesome people in my life and even luckier that they are my kids.