Dada and Dragons

What is worth spending valuable time?

She always asks,

What is more important,

To find her toy, or go on a walk? She is sad right now!

In her mind, it is decided. It is of course more important to find the toy.

Anytime I catch myself saying, “of course,” I need to step back and evaluate whether I am even truly listening to others or myself.

I’m realizing I am not always truly listening

And I am trying to decide that I know what is best for the children or other people in arbitrary cases.

Sometimes, I take them outside and they are absolutely miserable

But I’ve been noticing that when I follow their lead, our days go smoothly and they end up learning far more than if I try to force them into some regimented activity with minimal flexibility. If something serves a purpose for a child, practicing stacking blocks, for example allows a child to develop their coordination, geometry skills, balance, pattern recognition, and emotional fortitude. They are learning that they are capable of achieving their personal goals. And they are repeating it tirelessly until the lesson is firmly established. Once the lesson is learned - they will move forward. And if the lesson is never learned, they may be stuck in one place until they get to “find themselves.”

I am planning to publish a book tomorrow. I don’t think the content of this post will be in it. But I also think maybe it will eventually. I just had a silly idea that is only now possible because of the current publishing circumstances. Because I can self-publish with Amazon, and you can too, I can literally create a book and format it the way I like without any middle men slowing down my progress. However, teamwork has its benefits. Meaningful connections are necessary for feeling supported enough to pursue dreams. But that doesn’t mean that every decision and aspect of a creative work should pass through the lens of other’s opinions. In the end they’re just that - opinions. And it is ultimately up to each of us to interpret and weigh how important other’s opinions are and why. If I want to do something and I take conscious steps to ensure that I am being considerate to my loved ones, then I should do it.

Shocking pain hurts far more than anticipated pain.

Fear itself is more damaging than most things we fear.

When I say follow their lead, I’m not saying let down all guards and limits for children.

As adults, it is our responsibility to maintain the safety and over-all well-being of a child. But it is not our job to dictate every aspect of the course of their lives. That is their job to figure out.

We all talk about “discovering ourselves,” but is it not a shame that we waited until adulthood to find ourselves? If we were allowed to explore who we are in childhood, perhaps we could unlock who we are sooner. Our adulthood would be free to figure out what to do with that information and how.

The six-year-old I hang out with really loves intricately determining techniques for games we play and exploring the limits of his strength. He is studying what it means to be brave and never give up. With the monkey bars, he set goals for himself and challenges himself daily to try - and then he encourages his peers to try too, sharing his tips and tricks, lovingly. He stands by calmly when the girls get in spats - never finding himself at the center. When the girls have a problem with him, they tell him calmly. “It was a bit selfish how you didn’t think about us in that game. That makes us not want to play anymore. Can we have us all be nice?  

Magic is just about convincing others that the world you are describing is true. You build an image in their mind

She told me Grandma Catty scared her. She told me she didn’t want her in the game anymore. So I made Grandma Catty leave the game. For that day. A week or so later, I brought Grandma Catty back. She said nervously,  twice, “I thought Grandma Catty would never come back. I really thought she wouldn’t come back.” She wasn’t blaming me for this - it was just part of the story of the game. Grandma Catty’s disappearance was also woven into the story so as to make it feel natural and not forced because of her fear. But Grandma Catty came back and demonstrated that she was actually not a bad guy. She just thought it would be funny to hide Dada and make an adventure for you. She didn’t mean to scare you.

My fondest childhood memories involve the initiatives we took ourselves. Like the time we made a haunted house and totally scared our parents. Or the time we flipped over our kiddie pool to use as a table and borrowed our brother’s pokemon cards to sell to kids on the street. Or that other time that we made… deep fried dough balls (?) all by ourselves without our parent’s help hardly. Not only did we use the stove to deep fry dough that we made ourselves, we then packaged the dough balls up and carried them a mile to try to sell them to people in front of the closest grocery store. No adults went with us for that, as far as I can remember. Looking back, maybe that was a bit reckless, but I think I turned out okay. And who knows, maybe our parents were watching.

Though there was that one time we were walking the mile home from kindergarten, just the two of us, and it started to rain. The worms started coming up, so it was clear what we had to do. We ran to your house, got a bucket, and ran back into the storm to collect those bad boys. His dad loved to use worms for fishing, after all, so we could present them as a massive gift. Also, my mom loves having worms in her garden. She is always looking for more! Our parents would be so proud.

So we spent a few hours hunting down the critters and carefully scooping them into our bucket. As darkness fell, we figured we should head home. So we did!

And to our dismay, saw that his mom was terribly worried. They had nearly called the police. We forgot to tell them that we were going back out. We were not considerate of their feelings. But we were just kids. We didn’t know that the adults expected us back at a certain time. After all, they don’t always tell us when they will be back! They just pop in and out of our lives mysteriously. We never know when or why. His mom called my mom, and my mom drove over, even though we lived just three houses away. Maybe because it was dark and rainy.

But all of those memories are just hazy, just one detail of the story is burned into my mind’s eye. Our bucket of worms that we had so painstakingly filled had been left on the driveway. By us. Because we are just five and it is hard to keep track of things, especially when we are tired and used to adults helping manage those details. This was a good life lesson for learning to be accountable for all of my choices - be they conscious choices or not. If I am doing things unconsciously, then I need to be working on something in myself. I’m not saying children should be expected to clean all of their own messes - that would just teach them that they are completely alone when it comes to the nitty-gritty, but children should be learning how to hold themselves accountable for their choices. My mom, in her hurry to get me home safely, hadn’t noticed the bucket of worms in the driveway. She probably couldn’t see it from inside the car. I don’t know if we had poured the worms out for some reason, if the wind knocked the bucket over, or if it was driven over, but all I remember is that the worms were flattened. The driveway was painted with worm guts. A pancake of little worm bodies, pressed by an automobile’s heavy rubber tires. It mattered to me. I was devastated. They’re just worms didn’t make me feel better. Maybe I would have loved to hear, “You must be disappointed. You worked so hard to collect those worms!” It is much easier to move forward when we acknowledge a problem.

What if we spent an entire day in the land of Dada? “Can we play a Dada game?” is a daily question. I wonder where the kids would go. Today, we were playing “Squishy Family goes to the mermaid spa” and Dada kept getting kicked out for her shenanigans. The children wanted her to keep making mistakes. They didn’t allow her to speak unless she was confessing another silly mishap. I suppose the mishaps make her relatable. She demonstrates how to share information in a way that expresses her true intentions. She demonstrates how to resolve mistakes peacefully and honestly.

Why does Dada keep getting in trouble? Why is it assumed that Dada always does something wrong? What if Dada didn’t do anything wrong? What if she isn’t only checked in on her when she is messing something up? Dada is only noticed when she makes a mistake. Her mom, Purple, and siblings, Bubblegum and Blueberry, don’t talk to her much otherwise.

It is strange that “sit-down” discussions are often reserved only for problems. I love sit-down discussions about goals, plans, and ideas. Our memories, our fears, and our dreams. If we want our children to feel our love and our acceptance, we need to take the time to listen to their hearts instead of telling them how to feel. We each feel what we feel. Feelings cannot be argued against. However, regardless of feelings, we are each responsible for how we respond. If I respond to my sadness with yelling, that is my choice. Nobody made me yell. I chose to yell in response to a conflict. That is how I chose to react. Our reactions are responses. Controlling our reactions takes practice. But the first step is acknowledging that these issues exist within us. People always say that the first step is admitting you have a problem. Emphasis on you here. If there is an emotional problem in my life, then I have a problem. We each have problems. The problems may be complex and difficult to identify specifically, but the problem is often identifiable. Difficult circumstances are not a problem, necessarily. Depending on your perspective.

When I moved to Beijing, I knew nobody, knew none of the language, and didn’t even know whether my employer was legit. I had no apartment lined up and I had no bank account. I had enough cash in hand to last me a while - or so I thought. That was until my third day in China when my new landlord told me I needed to pay 5 months’ rent up front. I didn’t know much about negotiation then. Especially not in Chinese. But that’s no fault of his.  

I wasn’t too worried. I had a job, after all. When I found out that my job wouldn’t be paying me for another month and half, instead of worrying, I counted my remaining cash and determined how much I had left to spend on food each day before my next income. I had a home and enough clothes. Food was the only other thing that mattered. I realized I may need to take advantage of the free meals offered at work, but that I would be perfectly able to afford basic food as long as I didn’t splurge too often. No need to panic. Incredible Chinese food was to be found on nearly every corner for dirt cheap!  

Living off my savings was obviously not a long-term solution, but I immediately started considering alternatives to ensure that it would not become a long-term situation. In the end, I am responsible for making sure I am fed and taken care of and pursuing my dreams. Nobody else will hold me accountable if I won’t. It isn’t anyone else’s job to determine my next steps.

Sometimes the true root of a problem is that I just feel lonely. And if I can acknowledge that, the other mental problems resolve themselves. I don’t need someone else telling me how to live my life. I need other humans who support and encourage my dreams, and who call me out when I am drifting from my purpose.

We often search for which particular disease or ailment or input is causing a headache. But do we really know? We just know what triggered the headache, perhaps. But things such as headaches have complicated causes. Our emotional responses and physical reactions have complicated causes. And the causes are often buried deep within us. Why are we the way we are?

Why am I the way I am?

Perhaps Dada should speak up about this to her mom. Dada loves her mom endlessly and wants to feel that same kind of love back. Dada wants to be noticed for her beautiful singing and for how fast she can run. She wants to be told she is beautiful and that her strenuous efforts to dress herself didn’t go unnoticed. Perhaps Dada is my childhood self. She has purely good intentions for everyone and everything she meets. She loves animals, is a bit too goofy sometimes, is endlessly endearing, a bit of a diva, and loves to make people laugh and enjoy their lives.

I would like to be more like Dada. But maybe less annoying. I’ll work on that ;P