Amy Boucher Pye

Tag: children

  • Finding Ourselves Through Change – Children and Schools

    Trigger warning – a post about children and transitions.

    Photo: David Schott, flickr
    Photo: David Schott, flickr

    Today is PyelotBoy’s last day of primary school. When I think back to me changing from elementary school to junior high, my memories are fuzzy. I know I was nervous about moving from class to class throughout the day instead of staying in one familiar classroom, but I had the comfort of nearly all of my classmates moving to the same school (the now defunct Capitol View in St. Paul, Minnesota).

    Whereas for PyelotBoy, the move to secondary school seems massive. Although half of his classmates are going to the same school, they morph from 60 in their year group to 180. And unlike in the States where we have middle school or junior high, and then high school, for many here, their secondary school will be their home until university.

    I only started to realize the import of finding the right secondary school as my kids got older and I’d hear the buzz on that day when secondary schools announce who gets their places each year. (The school where PyelotBoy is going had 1100 applications for 180 places.) Then it was our turn to traipse between open evenings and tutoring sessions and entrance exams. We’re pleased with the school he’ll be going to – another attached to the Church of England – but as we experience the leaving events for him at his primary school, I ponder the meaning of leaving.

    I know the job of a parent is to release our children to the big and often scary world, teaching them to cope and hopefully thrive as we keep on letting them go. But it’s difficult. And the emotion can come through the individual moments, such as letting them travel to school on their own or allowing them more electronic devices. We know this is our mission, but sometimes we just want to freeze time.

    Parents face these moments of their kids growing up continually. A friend on a social-media site mentioned how hard the transition to a bigger car seat was for her, for it signaled her baby growing up. For another it was when her child moved to a child-facing-front stroller. For me, I remember the strong feelings of loss when I realized that my son was hearing things at school that I had no control over. Or the poignant feelings that arise when I listen to recordings we made with the children years ago, when their voices sound so strikingly different.

    So to the adage carpe diem – seize the day – I would add treasure the moments. We can’t freeze time, but we can be present, giving thanks for the gifts we receive, whether it’s our own children or grandchildren or those whom we are close to in the community.

    Any pointers or stories on how you’ve handled big transitions in your life, or the life of your children?

  • Living intentionally – or trying to

    Recently I read a suicide note.

    Having seen plenty of movies, I was expecting drama or at least a nice piece of paper. But this was just a torn scrap with a few words jotted down. He was matter-of-fact in his note to my friend, saying that his girls needed money, as did his ex-wife; that he couldn’t take it anymore; that his neighbor had a key. Desperation and depression, fueled by a chemical imbalance after years of drug abuse, resulted in his final act of an overdose.

    Except that my friend received his letter in the afternoon, not the evening, as she was off from work for medical reasons. They went to his flat, broke down the door, and found him drugged but living. She wondered if he’d be angry to be found alive. He wasn’t; in fact, he later thanked her for caring – a first for him. He said he had written to her because he didn’t want his body to be found after a week, covered in flies.

    This was the same friend who a couple of months earlier had been told by an acquaintance, a doctor, to “get that mark on your face checked out.” He was the second medical friend who noticed it, which propelled her into actually making an appointment with her GP instead of delaying or brushing off the advice. She found out that she had pre-cancerous cells and underwent treatment. A few weeks later, she heard that this young doctor had died on a hiking adventure after falling into a ravine. His potentially life-saving advice to her turned out to be one of his final acts of service on this earth.

    Life in all its fullness. A painting by Leo Boucher. Reproduced by permission.
    Life in all its fullness. A painting by Leo Boucher. Reproduced by permission.

    Two men I’ve never met, and yet they made a profound impact on me. Why? Because I can easily get caught up in projects or tasks, and thus startling stories such as these remind me to value what really is important. For instance, some mornings I wake up early. Sometimes I can fall back to sleep, but usually I admit to myself that I won’t be able to, so I give in and get up. Recently on one such morning, I went into my study to do some writing. But PyelotBoy also woke early and joined me, eager just to sit and spend some time together. I battled internally but stayed with him on the couch, reminding myself to enjoy these sweet moments together.

    I wish I could say that morning was a grand success of communion with one whom I love, but throughout our half-hour together I kept thinking of the tasks I could and should be accomplishing. But although I didn’t succeed in shutting down the distracting thoughts that time, at least I stayed rooted to the couch, sitting with my son and chatting together. I didn’t shoo him away or give him some early iPad time to compensate for me wanting to get on with my next thing. Small victories, yes, but worth celebrating.

    Life. It’s worth living. Who is sitting on your couch today whom you can be present to and enjoy?

  • Guest blog: PyelotBoy and CutiePyeGirl

     
    PyelotBoy, CutiePyeGirl, and I have had fun reading through some of my blogs this week. They’ve been enraptured by my writing (ha!), listening intently as I recounted my embarrassing encounter at the tea room in Lindisfarne. So they wanted to introduce themselves. PyelotBoy typed his first draft without me (but as I harp on again and again with my authors, good writing is rewriting, so I helped him with that) and CutiePyeGirl dictated hers to me. Enjoy!
     

    My amazing blog!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    As barely any people know who I am in Amy’s stories, I am often referred to as PyelotBoy, a name which our friend Mike Jowett made up.

    If you would like to learn more about me then read on!!!!!

    JAI am ten years old. I love sport, especially football/soccer [editor’s note: he loves American football too, but the Premier League unfortunately takes precedent], but like my dad I like cricket. If you have anything to ask me about football/soccer I could probably answer the question correctly.

    My birthday was just recently and I got an iPod touch as well as a the new Chelsea kit which you can find a picture of on Facebook (if you are my mom’s friend).

    Like my dad, I also know a lot about history and I already have plans for later on in life about history. When I am older I want to be a history lecturer at uni. An amazing fact I know about the Victorians: that the 7th earl of Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, was the president of the ragged school union. He also has a statue of him made from copper coins, which is called the Eros because he loved the poor.

    I am dyspraxic, so it makes it very hard to do certain things such as cutting and drawing so I am not very creative. I was diagnosed in July of this year so now I am finding it a bit easier because at school they help me more.

     

    All About a Princess

    2012-05-31 19.58Hi! I love art and I am good at it. My name here is CutiePyeGirl. I like school and I love my teacher because she is nice. Maths is my second favorite thing to do. I like a show called Strictly Come Dancing because it shows my favorite sport. My favorite couples on Strictly Come Dancing are a girl called Abbey and a boy called Aljaz, and also Susanna and Kevin. There was a girl called Deborah and a boy called Robin who were in a dance-off and they went out of the competition. I was sad when they left.

    I have been on loads of adventures and they were fun. I went to America this summer and we had a roadtrip. We had a swap-over of our house with people in Minnesota. I went to a place called Arrowwood and they had two swimming pools. We went to the playground next door to the golf area. I got to see my grandparents and cousins and aunt and uncles.

    I love singing, especially Jesse J’s “Pricetag” and I also like “Plastic Bag.” My favorite channel is CBBC.

  • Losing my cool – a study in imperfect parenting

    A happy moment on the school run with CutiePyeGirl
    Happier moments on the school run with CutiePyeGirl

    The morning school run can be a most dreaded experience. It’s certainly not something I anticipated would be such a big part of my life. In America, people generally don’t walk to school, the ubiquitous yellow school bus doing away with parents needing to deposit their children at school each day. Not so in Britain, where the School Run is an institution. A daily time of sweet engagement with one’s offspring. Right? Or, as the case this week, meltdowns. And that’s not even the behavior of the kids.

    Yep, I lost my patience yesterday and today. Yesterday with PyelotBoy, and today with CutiePyeGirl. Autonomy is important to PyelotBoy; he doesn’t like to be told what to do, and being instructed to wear a coat on a rainy morning can make life spiral downwards. Today CutiePyeGirl decided that she’s outgrown her Princess scooter and now will be laughed at by her friends, so using said scooter for the mile walk to school was a tear-filled experience, amplified by her stepping in poo and scooting through a massive puddle, with ramifications on both counts.

    My daughter isn’t too old yet to reject the idea of me giving her a huge hug and whispering a prayer in her ear once we got through the school gates (phew, on time even with the challenges). I hope she’ll shake off the trials of the morning, as my son did yesterday (he seemed fine mid-morning when I dropped off the forgotten piano books – another sign of us not being on the ball). I know she’s tired; we’re nearing the half-term break, which we all seem to need during this busy autumn.

    But as I think about this week and the school run, I sigh and ask God to forgive me for losing my cool with the kids. What do I need to do differently? How can I reign in my tongue? How can I impart fun and creative memories of this time I have with my kids? A season I know will soon pass. As I consider this season before God, I think of how he’s the perfect parent, never losing his cool with me. I’m grateful for that, and pray that I can pass along some of his divine love to my family.

    So how about you? Do you do the school run, and if so, what tips do you have for making it a creative, happy experience? How do you keep your cool when you’re tired, not wanting to be late, and knowing your hair is going crazy in the mist?

  • When life changes in a moment – or not

    A second can change everything.

    Yesterday my husband and kids were meeting me at my parents’ home for dinner. They arrived in a jumble, the story spilling out of my children in fragments before Nicholas was able to park the car and come into the house:

    PyelotSon: “An idiot/jerk almost hit us!” he said with a nervous giggle. (Sidenote: Yes, he’s picked up those derogatory terms from a couple of my times at the wheel.)

    CutiePyeGirl: “We almost crashed!”

    1194984910785474358stop_sign_miguel_s_nchez_.svg.med

    The chatter continued, and it took us some unraveling to figure out the chain of events when Nicholas walked in a moment later, shaking with adrenaline. He filled in the details in rapid succession: They were driving along the straight stretch before turning into my parents’ driveway when an oncoming car drifted into their lane. Nicholas honked (UK: hooted) the horn and the probable-young-person-who-was-texting reacted quickly, because he or she drove around my family – he/she moved onto the sidewalk/grass on the passenger’s side of my family’s borrowed van – to avert a head-on collision.

    In this instance, we were saved. We were mercifully and miraculously saved from what could have been a life-taking or life-altering crash. I have my family intact, and the thought has kept me from sleeping as I recount the what-if’s, thinking about hospitals or funeral homes and write-offs of borrowed vehicles.

    But we aren’t always kept from harm in this fallen world, for every day some form of sin, disease, or injustice seeps into our lives. I don’t know why God cushioned my family yesterday when other families lose sons and daughters, wives and husbands, mothers and fathers to accidents or cancer or abuse. But I’m grateful. I give thanks, mindful of the fragility of life, when a second can change everything.

    Today I return thanks to God for saving me and mine. I want to be like the leper who returned to thank Jesus for healing him. The gift of the present moment feels all the more precious, the morning after the night before that didn’t change our lives forever.

  • The things we love

    2013-07-24 11.06All the talk of royal babies has got me thinking about the beloved cuddly toys of childhood. Do you still have a favorite stuffed animal? I do; my bear with its sewed-up neck peeks out in my study, more a thing of sentiment than of love these days. It’s old, musty, and is marked with paint. Its head won’t stay upright because I used to clutch it to me, throttling it close, neck in my arms. I keep as a reminder of childhood love.

    PyelotBoy’s first favorite animal was Quackers. We had several, for fear of losing one. Indeed, when my dad took him and the duck for a walk, they lost Quackers. Thankfully we had another one that was easily exchanged.2013-07-24 11.09

    But soon PyelotBoy knew which was the real Quackers, and no other one could substitute. The Quackers he loved had a “poor eye,” which was fitting, for PyelotBoy had a poor eye too, one that had to be strengthened through patching the other eye and eventually surgery.

    Then Quackers lost some of his appeal when Freddy the Frog came onto the scene. Given to him by American friends, this frog was everything for awhile. Then he lost interest. And PyelotBoy has grown out of stuffed animals now, with Quackers and Freddy shoved into a corner of a wardrobe. When I catch sight of them, I smile and feel a rush of love, thinking of my sweet boy who is growing up so quickly.

    But the two items that I see regularly around the house are Fleece and Baby Elmo. When I look at them, I feel that same swell of love and affection. For they are CutiePyeGirl’s favorite things. They have traveled to the States countless times, and have been to Ireland and Wales and Spain and many a place in England. Only one time were they left behind, when we spent a couple of days at our friends’ house outside of London. The first night was tough, but CutiePyeGirl coped.

    I have to admit I fail to see the extent of Baby Elmo’s appeal. As a creature he’s not the most attractive with his big plastic head and wizened body. I have to be careful when handing him to CutiePyeGirl, for his head is hard and could hurt her. Fleece, in contrast, is all soft and cuddly, and has become a character in her eyes. It’s grown from the skin of a sheep to something that almost has its own living characteristics.2013-07-24 11.10

    If our house was on fire and everyone was safe, I would definitely grab Quackers, Freddy, Fleece, and Baby Elmo. I’m grateful for the way the children have loved them. Our children aren’t royalty – they probably wouldn’t even qualify by marriage, being half Yankee-Doodles – but they certainly are a prince and princess to us. And to the King, to whom they are direct descendants.

    What was your favorite cuddly toy?

  • Rapping to the Lord’s Prayer

    Last Sunday I led the group for 11-12 year olds at our church. I have to admit that kids’ ministry has never felt like something I’ve been called to. Nothing against kids, of course. I love my two dearly. But I’ve always been so keen on discipleship for adults that I’ve bypassed the younger set.

    DSCN5929

    But these budding nearly teens are a wonderful bunch. Filled with great questions and strong opinions. I have to check my church jargon at the door and remember to keep it real and authentic. And I come away glad to have been a part of their discussions.

    So on Sunday we were looking at Acts 4, all about how the once-frightened Peter, who betrayed Jesus those three times, was now bold and winsome and filled with the Holy Spirit as he and John explained their actions to the religious leaders and defended the new thing God was doing. One of our activities was to explore some of the Scripture in rap form, courtesy of Scripture Union. We read the two raps aloud, jiving and moving to the beat. Then, to my surprise, we wrote our own.

    Now I should stress that I didn’t think we’d have success in this exercise – group writing and all of that. I thought it would be beyond us. But lo and behold, we put down the first line, and then the next, and the next. And a rap was born. Okay, so it’s more of a lyrical poem than a rap, but here, for your reading pleasure, is the Lord’s Prayer rendered by us (best read aloud):

    Dad up above!

    Awesome is your name

    Your city breaking in

    We’re following your way

    Here on the ground

    As up above.

    Can you give us our grub

    And free us from our mess

    As we free others who screw us up.

    Please hold us back from doing bad

    And keep us far away

    From the angel who fell.

    Cause yours is the city

    And yours is the force;

    You simply are the best

    Each and every day.

    Oh yeah!

    © 2013 Regina Baidoo, Amy Boucher Pye, Helen Fox

    So tell me: are you called to ministry to children? If so, what are the rewards and the challenges?

    How about writing a biblical rap? Share it in the comments!

  • Jesus loves the little children…

    Tanzania
    The view from our Land Rover.
    Looks like we’ll wait a bit…

    We were driving along a dirt road in Tanzania, making our way from the lush game parks to dusty Dodoma, the political capital. It was the dry season, so the roads were passable, although filled with potholes bigger than a small child. Our hotel had packed us some lunches in nifty boxes – breaded meats, packets of nuts, and the sweet small bananas I had never tasted from a Western supermarket. With adult-sized lunches packed for our two small children, we had the equivalent of one lunch leftover.

    After an hour or so of the bumpy journey, our driver saw a clump of children by the side of the road and asked if we could give the excess food to them. “Why yes,” we exclaimed, embarrassed that we hadn’t thought of it ourselves. We slowed and I opened my window, motioning to a little boy. I pointed to the box and asked him if he’d like it, knowing that he wouldn’t understand English but not knowing how to communicate except through words and motions. Then I asked if I could take his photograph, showing him my camera.

    Tanzania 2
    The boy holding our leftovers from lunch.
    What was he thinking?

    How I wished I could have understood what he was saying, and to hear what his life was like, a little Maasai boy perhaps owning only the clothes on his back. Jesus loves him as much as he loves my boy, who has more shirts than he can wear and more food than he can eat.

    Jesus loves the privileged; Jesus loves the poor. His love for us is so all-encompassing and overwhelming that we may struggle to comprehend it. But look at how Jesus shows his love as recorded in the Bible. For instance, one day people were bringing their children to Jesus, asking him to bless them. But the disciples got angry and rebuked the parents. Jesus was indignant, however, saying to the disciples: “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these” (Mark 10:14). He gathered the children in his arms and blessed them.

    In one simple action, Jesus shatters the cultural expectations. For children were then ranked even lower than slaves – they had no status and were often pushed aside as weak. In fact, people often simply threw away unwanted children at birth. Unseemly types would seek out these disposed-of babies and raise them for their own purposes – as gladiators or prostitutes. Or they would disfigure them so that the children would be more heart-rending and lucrative beggars. But to Jesus children were no longer outcasts or distractions, but vitally important members of the kingdom of God.

    IMG_1122
    Close bonds between mother and offspring. How much more does God, our parent, love us.

    People are worth everything to God. He made us and delights in us. He showers us with love – the love of a father and a mother. He leads us with cords of human kindness; with ties of love. He delights in us, quieting us with his love and rejoicing over us with singing.

    Which children can you love today? Or grown-up children?