Kur Manifesto

In the last blog, I mentioned wanting time to think during the Kur. Specifically, I was wondering if I would have any "Aha" moments. Our beloved Kita teacher, Miss Melanie, went on a Kur and it laid the foundation for her finding another position at a Kita closer to her home. It was a sad day for our Kita, but a great win that her everyday life is hopefully more manageable. 

The big question PB^2 is always thinking about is "when will we move home?" (The follow-up question being "where is home?") This last time we went "home" we felt the pull so much that we thought we'd move back this summer and even sold our house in Portland (closing today!). But, not even a couple weeks back in Berlin, we were lulled into the comforts of European life, specifically very subsidized childcare. Which brings me to my current thinking which of course can change - like that time we decided to only have two kids and then after moving to Germany decided to go back to the original plan of three. Or that time Trump got elected giving us a not-so-gentle nudge to accelerate our plans for living abroad. Or that time Corona virus changed, ahem, continues to disrupt our lives. The list goes on. In any case, this Kur helped me realize that it likely makes sense for us to stay in Berlin until Carmen is school age. Why? Because when the kids aren't in school/Kita, it's a lot of work for me. 

Ok, this is the point when I should insert a bunch of caveats and ask everyone (including myself) not to judge each other.  Without listing all the awesomeness, suffice to say I recognize my life is cake comparatively. When I say parenting is hard work, what I mean is a lot of my parenting experience thus far is analogous to early potty training. Early is 2022 early = before 2 years old, not 1950 early = 18 months. As a reference and without naming any names - I'll just use go German here and pretend that kids are the 'das' article (not feminine of masculine) for anonymity - , we had one kid who basically potty trained itself, one kid who more or less followed a plan, and one kid who made me question my will to live. People have all sorts of feelings on the subject, but at the end of the day, in two out of three cases, the process was longer, harder, and more labor intensive because we did it early. But, the kids gained confidence, the world has fewer diapers in the landfill, and I got a break from all of the cloth diaper washing. 

So in summary, my style of parenting will often be more labor intensive and time consuming but at the end of the day, hopefully, the kids will be more self reliant and flexible. I can't make that next claim to say that Paul's and my life will be better because we all know that kids will make their own decisions no matter how intentional the parenting. That's a good segue to the other advantage to staying in Germany longer is I could potentially do another degree here for free. After more than ten years out of the game, I'll likely need to just change gears to finding something that could work part-time so I'm not too much in the kids' business when they are older. 

At the risk of setting the bar too high, I also realized that I have more parenting I should be doing. As a point in clarification, in this case is with an eye towards family harmony, not towards adding some extra curricular activity. I still fall into the trap of rushing around. This became especially apparent when I took the two little littles to a drugstore to pick a couple things here in this small town of Zingst. In Berlin, it's always a sh%t show but it's kind of ok because Berlin is chaotic already. In off season Zingst, it became clear to me just how loud the kids are. I was at a point a couple weeks ago where I was thinking maybe the solution was really not taking them anywhere - being one of those parents who shops while the kids are at school instead of with them. But, I also think that kids need to learn how to be bored and do mundane things. Per usual, the solution requires more work for me but hopefully is worth it. Proposed shopping solution:

1. Never go anywhere without ample time. Carmen might want to dress herself, add 20 minutes.
2. The kids need an intro to any situation where I have expectations. Example: We are going to Rossmann. We are going to pick-up dish soap, poofies, and pens. I want one of you to grab the little cart and one of you hold my hand. We stay close together, and we use quiet voices. 

Will my renewed commitment to giving more context of expectations return better results? Who knows? But I have to at least try. Before you think I'm leaning in too much, I'm still not worrying about a lot of things. For example, I'm not fighting my kids to put on or take off jackets depending on the temperature or location. I'll save my energy and let natural consequences take it from there. 

A final Aha moment is that I miss dancing. I've been doing a bunch of back and posture classes here at the Kur which mostly remind me that any movement is good. Also, Carmen is likely missing dance, as she keeps randomly yelling for Alexa when we're out and about. Let's see if some easy kid/parent dance opportunity comes our way.

I intentionally posted this without pictures to hide the bomb shell revelations. Let's see who reads it. ;)