Carol Barnier

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If I’m Diapering A Watermelon, Then Where’d I Put That Baby?

By Carol Barnier

I recently volunteered in our church nursery to help with an upcoming high attendance day.  However, I warned the staffing coordinator that there was only one teeny-weeny little problem.  I knew with absolute certainty that when the day arrived for me to show up and actually work in the nursery, it could be guaranteed that I will have forgotten.  This new mom smiled, and said, “Oh I understand.  Isn’t that just awful when you know there’s something you’re supposed to be doing, and it just nags at you and nags at you...and it takes forever for you to remember it?”   I looked back at her with what I think was a pained expression and said, “Before I homeschooled, that was my experience too.  What you just said?  That was it!  But now...it doesn’t even nag at me.  It’s just gone!” 

It’s not that my brain has become empty.  On the contrary, it’s that it has become overwhelmingly full.  And not full of lovely, high and lofty thoughts such as what powerful symbolism that oil painting is revealing to me....or just how many angels can dance on the head of pin?  No, no, no.  It was nothing so cerebral.  My thoughts run more in the line of how to keep the pancake syrup off the math homework now being quickly whisked away right into the path of the oncoming spilled milk while trying to quickly recall the location of the plunger.  Now multiply that times 3,000 and you have my typical day. 

So what is a highly distractible, overwhelmingly busy, homeschooling mom to do? 

We must begin by simply letting go of the idea that if we were just

•           better organized,

•           or more at peace,

•           or tried a little harder,

•           or were a better person,

•           or spent more time in prayer,

•           or adopted a low‑carb, high‑insect diet,

that we would somehow start remembering things. Give it up. Whatever the reason for your lapses, it’s gone. If you feel so inclined to have a reason, count your children.  Each one removed 1/3 of your brain’s ability to store and retrieve information. If you’ve had more than three, well, you do the math. (If you still can.)  Next, we must adopt strategies that accommodate this truth about ourselves...the truth that our brains are no longer reliable sources for storage.  Other sources must be utilized.  Luckily for us, once we begin to look, we discover that many other sources and strategies are available and that they serve us well. 

I didn’t start out being so distractible.  Indeed, at one point I considered myself quite organized.  When I gave birth to my first child, I fancied myself downright orderly.   And God smiled.  And sent me a child the world has come to label a profound case of ADHD.   Eleven years later, this child was the inspiration for my first book entitled, “How To Get Your Child Off the Refrigerator and On To Learning.”  Yes, I really found him on top of the refrigerator.  Fortunately, he accepted my one constructive criticism of this event and it hasn’t been repeated.  But many times I have turned the corner to find my son swinging from the door jams.  While most people are aware that ADHD children possess great volumes of energy and an inability to focus, only those of us who live with them have come to know and love that delightful quality known as “Impulse Control”.   While this gives rise to many difficulties in our schooling day, it also produces some of the funniest moments of my life.

One night, years ago, my son came rushing into my room, out of breath, to inform me that something “really serious” had happened.  It somehow involved flying pieces of broken light bulb glass and smoke.  Fearing an impending fire, I flew to the site of concern.  Sure enough, there was a light bulb with a substantial portion missing.  I found the offending piece lying almost 10 feet from the lamp.  I wondered at the laws of physics that had been at work when I saw what looked like the remnants of a water drop on the piece of glass.  I asked my son if water had been dropped on to the bulb. 

With very deliberate speech, he said that perhaps when he had been talking, a piece of saliva had been expelled onto the bulb.  Why had he been talking to a lamp, I pondered.  Then I noticed the dozen or so desert-dry rivulets of previous spit streams that were encrusted upon this defenseless bulb, “Glenn?”...I called quietly to my son.  “Have you actually been spitting on this light bulb?”  No answer.  He gave me a very wide-eyed and fearful expression.  Let’s try again.  “Glenn, WHY were you spitting on this light bulb?”  I could actually see the 17 or 18 wheels turning in his head as he searched for a response.  Finally, the answer I shall never forget emerged from his lips.  “Because I liked the Sizzle.”  In spite of the clear dangers, I burst out laughing.  These children do indeed like the sizzle.  They like to see the sizzle, hear the sizzle and often be the sizzle.  It’s a part of their challenge but also of their wonderfulness.   How they perceive that “sizzle” in themselves is up to you.  Indeed, all the gifts in our children and in ourselves may be missed if we don’t actively look for them.  

This article has been reprinted by permission of the author with excerpts from her books, “If I’m Diapering a Watermelon Then Where’d I Put the Baby?” and “How To Get Your Child Off the Refrigerator and On To Learning.”, both published by Emerald Books at (www.YWAMPublishing.com ) Copyright 2004 and 2000 respectively.  All rights reserved.  Order either of these books at the YWAM site or at www.amazon.com .  If you are interested in having Carol speak at your next event, you may learn more about her speaking activities, booking information and even hear her on-line at www.OpenGifts.org. 

Copyright © 2001-2006 Carol L Barnier  All Rights Reserved.