O-Mom Angers Soccer Community, "Give Sleep A Chance!"

Perhaps I'm just being bitchy... I'm open to that. Seriously, I am. But, I don't think it's me (this time). 

My daughter wants to play soccer this season and I'm holding out. I won't commit until they can tell me when the damn practices are going to be. This isn't about finding ways to balance her sports with my coaching business, conflict with other sports, or even going to church. 

This is about sleep. 

Frankly, I don't trust that these people have my child's best interest at heart... at least regarding sleep. Many of the girls who will be in this team are just wrapping up a season of indoor soccer, which means that it's the same parents, leadership, etc., and I have a major problem with their game schedule. For example, I understand that tonight there are games at 7:30 and 8:30 pm. Thirty minute games at a venue that is thirty-minutes from home... at BEST, we are looking at 6th and 7th grade kids getting in bed at 10:00 pm. By at best, mean that they walk out the door immediately following the game, drive directly home, brush teeth, climb in bed and go directly to sleep. 

I don't know about you but there's almost always some kind of wrench waiting to be thrown into a plan like that at my place - like a need for food after playing two soccer games. Or how about a shower? Also, how easy is it to fall asleep within an hour of having a crazy good time, running your ass off with all of your friends. Those things are only part of the problem. These children have to be in their desks, alert, and ready to learn at 7:25 am. Mine get up at 6:00 am, before the sun even comes up, and I know many others who wake even earlier because of long bus rides. 

Are you following me? I'm grown and because I get up at 6:00 am, I strive to go to sleep at 10:00 pm. If I'm asleep by 11:00, I'm pretty solid for the next day. I don't always get it, but that's what I strive for and more than any other time in my life... I feel good. I have enough energy to function well, without caffeine or nicotine or loads of sugar to keep my energy up, for the entire day. Again... I am grown. I have these big girl pants that help me remember what's on the line when I want to stay up and play. And when I choose to do that, these same big girl pants remind me that I still have to be functional. Because I'm grown, I have the tools to do that.

My daughter is ELEVEN years old and sleep experts says she should still be getting ten to eleven hours of sleep each night. At THIRTEEN, my son still needs nine to ten hours a night. Do the math people, it isn't enough! My kids go upstairs at 8:00 pm to get ready for sleep and read. Lights are out at 9:00 pm. Even my kids, with my seemingly crazy obsession with sleep, are only getting nine. 

I can see it in them, especially when soccer season starts up. They are dragging ass in the morning. My son occasionally tells me about falling asleep in class. Sleep is a truly critical part of our body's cycle and many, many people (young and old) in this country are SUFFERING because of the effects of sleep deprivation. I am a Life Coach and I can tell you that sleep deprivation is a huge problem for 90% of clients when when we first start working together. Don't you watch the news, we are an obese, sleep-deprived nation. This is part of our national crisis. And NO, I'm not being dramatic. This is real.

I found this fabulous article about adolescents and sleep deprivation, and have summarized some of the findings here. It is my intention to shock you into some sort of concerned state.

Sleepy people screw stuff up - Traffic accident research has shown over and over again that sleepy people are more prone to accidents. They wreck cars, which my kids don't drive yet, but they do drive bikes, skateboards, and FEET and they need to be functioning at the top of their game to keep from darting out in front of a car to get their soccer ball. They are mature enough to operate equipment in my house, like the stove and oven... do I want them doing that while stoned from their soccer exhaustion? It makes since that sleepy kids would be more likely to be injured around the house - bumping their heads or loosing their footing on the stairs - and when playing sports because that's the meaning of more accident prone. Their bodies are not equipped to react well to what's going on. 

Sleepy people look stupid - Sleep deprivation affects their performance in school. I'm not going to water this down for you. THINK about the impact of this. Your kid is sleepy, so her grades slip. She tries harder, and gets more sleepy, so the grades slip more. The implications on her self-esteem alone are TOXIC and the impact will be life-long. She will never be able to make sense of the fact that she was too sleepy to perform well in school... she's simply going to assume she's stupid. This is huge, people. Wake up.

Sleepy people are more moody - Let me just review the ways that less sleep affects one's mood: More of the "negative" emotions (anger, sadness, and fear), more depression, more difficulty controlling emotional or behavioral problems, inability to focus, increased impulsivity, and problems staying still or completing tasks, (resembling the symptoms associated with ADHD... and dramatically increasing the symptoms in those who actually have ADHD, by the way), more misbehavior and aggressiveness. Are these things you want amplified at your house? No thanks, we're good here!

Sleepy people get stoned - Now, I simplified the points above but this one you're going to get word for word from the researchers... "Teens who get less sleep than they need also have a higher likelihood of drug use (Carskadon, 1990). This is not limited to stimulants, alcohol use is also more prevalent among teens who report getting less sleep than their peers. Alcohol can facilitate "unrestful" sleep; sleep which has an inhibited REM phase and therefore leaves users exceptionally tired even after a night of sleeping. Stimulants such as caffeine or nicotine over long periods of time not only create a dependency on the substance in order to but can also significantly affect the quality of sleep. Caffeine is in fact a psychoactive drug, though we rarely realize it, and the rate at which teens are becoming dependent on caffeine during their days is an alarming indication of underlying sleep problems." This is HUGE. The reason that we are all doing all of this stuff for and with our children is so they will not turn to this crap... sleep HAS to be a priority.

I want my kids to be safe and make good choices. I want them be smart and perform well in school. I want them to feel happy and peaceful, to behave, and focus on the things that matter in life. I don't want them to get drink, smoke, do drugs, or become dependent on caffeine. I think it's safe to assume we all want the same thing... so let them freaking sleep. 

If we care about these kids, which we all claim to do when we organize extracurricular activities, then we MUST stop setting them up to fail. This isn't a one time thing, this is their soccer schedule for three months! Yes, my daughter is going to be pissed off if I don't let her play, if the practices end at 8:00 pm or later. What I want to know is... why aren't everyone else's parents pissed off? Wake up! 

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The article I referenced is, "Sleep Deprivation and Adolescents: What Are the Long-Term Effects of Sleep Deprivation and What Are the Repercussions of Sleep-Deprivation in Adolescents?" by Damon Stea. I found it here: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/444311/sleep_deprivation_and_adolescents.html?cat=5

Middle School Rules

This afternoon I got a facebook message from a friend who lives in my community:

"Hey Christy - Now I'm coming to you for input.......(my oldest), like Kira, is starting FMS this year.......he's excited.....I'm very nervous and unsure.......any tips or advice I need before letting him go off in to the big world of middle school."

I replied: 

Off the top of my head...
1. Make sure he goes to the pool party Friday night for the 6th graders from all three feeder schools. You won't be staying.
2. Drop him off at the curb on the first day. You won't be staying.
3. Ask lots of open ended questions once he starts going school to get info out of him, as it will be harder and harder to get info out of him.
4. Be involved, even if he doesn't seem to like it.
5. Activities - sports, academic clubs, arts - if he isn't already involved or planning to be involved, encourage him to do it. It seemed to really help Seth a great deal to have a group of kids that he got extra close to. He's going to get an identity for something, it might as well be a sport or as an artist or something good, right?
6. You are not going in. Really.
7. Tell him it feels odd to you, you're not really sure how to act. He is getting older. He needs you a little less. This is new for both of you. It will help him recognize that those things all apply to him also. He will like the idea that he's got something to offer you... how to be a cool middle school mom.
8. Once he's involved with something, find out how you can help with that thing. For Seth that was soccer, and I volunteered to be the team coordinator and photographer. This allowed me to connect really well with the coach and ALL of the other kids in his little micro world (who were all completely digging me because I was taking bad ass pictures of them) and their parents, without it feeling like I was tagging along with him.
9. Tell him how awesome you are. He will forget to notice. So, tell him, "It would be socially appropriate for you to tell me I'm awesome right now." I use this every once and a while when I drive him to school without complaining that he missed the bus or even without him asking (like when it was sub-zero or he had a ton to carry.) I smile that knowing mother smile. He sheepishly says, "Thank you." We get on with our day.
10. You're not going in... just stay in the car and let him slam the door and trot off into that big ol' foreign building without you. He probably won't even look back... it's okay. He's already fine and you will be, in about fifteen years.

I wanted to post this little exchange for anyone else who wants to know how we (what that really means is 'I') survived the first year of middle school. If you haven't been paying attention, it was a doozie of a year and my kid rocked it.

I rocked it, too, thanks to the kind women running the above referenced pool party last year when Seth was a rising sixth grader. Their PTO table, covered with Fairview Middle School paraphernalia, was planted firmly across the sidewalk leading into the pool. They took my kid's cash and told him to go on in and have a good time.

I just stood there, while he bolted off into the festivities, wondering when he'd acquired that middle school swagger... finally I said to one of them, "I'm not going in, am I?" She smiled that knowing smile and said, "No, you're not going in. He'll be fine." I said, "Obviously, he's fine. What about me?"

We chatted for a while and then I said, "Okay, so what about the first day of school?" She said, "You're not going in." I said, "Really?" She said, "Really." I said, "He's got all of those school supplies... they won't even fit in his backpack?" She said, "You are not going in."

Really.

1-2-3-Gibbs!

Watch and listen.



These boys want to remember their friend and teammate, Jake Gibbs.

They want to build two concrete memorial benches on the soccer field shared by Fairview’s Middle and High School teams. The project is pending school system approval, and a budget from the supervising contractor.

They will need money for materials.

Please help.

To learn more about the Jake Gibbs Memorial project, visit www.FairviewSoccer.com

Thank you.

The Essence of O-Mom

I once wrote a column surveying some of the challenges experienced by women in blended families. I pondered celebrating step-moms with a t-shirt with an "S" on the chest, but rejected the idea, fearing the perception that I'd labeled myself "Super-Mom". In what became an after-dinner tradition, I held a reading of the final draft for family approval, before submitting it to my editor. In a moment of extraordinary charm, my first grader offered to get me a shirt with an "O" on the chest. I paused, pondered, and with great anticipation inquired, "An O?" He proudly explained, "An O... for Owesome-Mom!" 

The truth is that I'm not like most of the other moms, or at least it feels that way to me. I don't mean that in a proud way, like I think I'm better than the others. I mean that when I used to wait in my mini-van in the car rider line at my children's elementary school, I wondered if I was invisible or perhaps worse, if I'd been abducted by aliens and if my particular torture was participation in a huge experiment of human identity crisis management. As I journeyed to the soccer field... it felt like the van must belong to someone else and like the conversation on the sidelines came from a movie script where I played a soccer mom, not even remotely resembling the real me... whom I was fairly certain I'd never met. Talk about vacations, schedules, home repairs took center stage, while I felt like there was no one to talk to about the things on my heart - human rights, destruction of the environment, how to balance my hopes and desires as a woman with the needs of my family. I was working tirelessly to get my degree from a local university and was harboring dreams of starting my own business. It felt like I didn't speak the same language as many of the women around me.

Then, in my academic world, there was little talk of family life, even among those who had children. Deeply committed to my connected parenting style, I worried about the emotional impact that the absence created by academic pursuits would have on my young children. While the feminists on campus struggled to figure out how to fight for equality in a post-bra-burning era, I searched for a world where a woman pursues her professional dreams without sacrificing the parenting that I strongly believed my children needed to thrive. 

It's important to me that you understand something... I think moms are great. I believe that if every single woman who wants desperately to be at home raising her children were able to do that, the world would be a much better place. I feel profound admiration and respect for a woman who believes that her primary purpose, whether for a brief or more extended period of time, is to support and empower her children as a stay-at-home mom. I believe children need strong, consistent relationships with a primary attachment figure in order to grow up and be healthy, successful adults. Also, if every single woman who wants to work full-time outside her home were able to do so, while ensuring that her children's needs for strong, consistent connection with a primary attachment figure were met, the world would be a much better place. 

The O-mom is the woman with children who wants to be there, in the home as much as possible, raising her children, but also dreams/hopes/desires to start a business, get an education, or in some other way make a difference in the world. It is my dream to empower those women, to help them find their truth and support them to in living in alignment with that truth. Through my own journey, I've learned to honor myself as a woman with multiple dreams - love, parenthood, health, career, creativity, etc. Now, my job is to open the doors of opportunity to other women, who want to live the dynamic and powerful life of their dreams.

A few weeks ago, I caught a few minutes of reality TV that really illustrated this "dilemma" for me. During an interview, an executive from a name brand laundry detergent manufacturer described their target audience as adult women. She clarified that they are not just moms, but women who may or may not have children, partners, and jobs. 

I am a woman. I am a woman raising a pair of truly remarkable children. I am a woman who is completely and madly in love with her partner. I was born to empower women, and I use my gifts as a writer, teacher, and life coach to do that. I love to create and to learn. I lose sleep over injustice and the pain and oppression of other human beings. I marvel at, and usually cry, when I witness something extraordinary. I take beautiful photographs, and I love to dig in the dirt. 

Is this kind of life complicated? Well, it can be, and that's why I didn't stop with being an O-Mom. I became a Life Coach... because I want to help other women play and win all of the big games in their heart.