Yesterday my kids and I spent all day with H. and her three children, ages five years, three years, and seven months. "All day" means we leave for H.'s house just after breakfast, ideally by eight-thirty, and return home at four-thirty. It is a regular work day. We repeat it every Thursday.
H.'s three-year-old makes coffee for us (yes, really! He's very proud of himself), and we have a cup while we catch up on the news of the last few days and unload her dishwasher. Then we clear the table and set up homeschooling. We each work with our own oldest son at the same table until they've finished their day's work. That takes an hour or so (yesterday longer than usual). They run off outside, and we make lunch.
Yesterday H. struggled some with her five (nearly six)-year-old---he's been resisting the work lately, and I could tell she was very frustrated. So my son was done first, and I made the lunch myself while she took deep cleansing breaths, or something like that.
"LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU MOM" ENCHILADAS
Open 1 can of enchilada sauce. Tear up some corn tortillas. Open and drain 1 can of kidney beans. Open 1 bag of shredded cheese. Layer corn tortilla shreds, kidney beans, shredded cheese, and enchilada sauce in dish. Beat 4 eggs and pour over layers. Add more layers of tortillas, beans, cheese, and sauce. Top with extra cheese. Bake 30 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Serve with one can of corn dumped in a bowl with a spoon stuck in it.
After lunch we did some work around H.'s house, alternating among cycling the dishwasher, clearing the counters, and sitting on the back porch picking leaves of lamb's-quarter from the stem, adding it to a pot for their dinner. The children squirted each other with the garden hose, and H.'s baby girl played with blades of grass at our feet.
We sat in the pleasant summer shade and discussed H.'s troubles getting the oldest to pay attention to his schoolwork. She was most bothered by her own reactions to these sessions. Getting angry, making veiled threats of punishments, and other reactive measures seemed not to "be working" and, more importantly, weren't how she wanted to hear herself speaking to him. We hashed out a few strategies to try. For instance, getting the younger two settled in advance so she could minimize distractions; making up a checklist that he could see and understand while they worked through each of the tasks she had planned for the day.
By the time we finished working through this topic, all the greens were in the pot. We came back in and I cleaned the kitchen some more while she did some paperwork. The children followed us in, and the 2-, the 3-, the 5-, and the nearly-6-year-old developed an intense and very serious game of "doctor/nurse/patient" that went on quietly for more than an hour. Around three-thirty they fixed themselves a snack of cheese. Then I helped them pick up some of the detritus from their living room game while H. finished up her work. We left around four.
I do this twice a week, every week, with H.'s family and with two other families. (Not that every week I'm solving H.'s problems. It goes both ways)
I'm lucky. I'm not isolated in my house with only my own children for company. But this isn't entirely by chance---it's partly by choice and by effort. And it could be like this for other women at home, if they are willing to look around and take the risk of making permanent connections with others like them and not-so-like them.
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