This Week: Birthdays and Balagan
We want our kids to be safe and feel safe. In a world of ineffectual leadership on crucial issues, can we make that happen?
Dear fam and friends,
Two nights ago, I woke up to Big Kid calling for me through the monitor. My wife and I have an agreement: I go to him in the night and she wakes to feed Baby who, miraculously, is the kind of child who has a quick snack and goes back to sleep. So, I shook myself awake and headed over to his room, where I found he’d had an accident and needed his sheets changed. I kissed his forehead, told him I’d take care of it, and got to work changing his pajamas and sheets. It was 5 am.
He chose that moment to climb on my back and stay there, snuggling me like a little cub, while I took care of the linens.
Let me tell you, it’s not easy to change a bed with a 40 pound toddler on your back. Still, I didn’t tell him to get off. See, Big Kid is a climber. He climbs up my back while we watch videos, he climbs on my wife’s shoulders while we eat meals, he climbs and climbs and climbs. These back-snuggles are one way in which he shows love and closeness. And yes, it’s a little weird. And no, it is not always super comfortable and convenient.
I could come up with a bunch of reasons why he scales us like a climbing wall—things to do with sensory hyposensitivity to sensory inputs or not wanting too much eye-contact—but the truth is, I don’t really know why he does it. I do know he feels safe that way and, frankly, that’s all I need to know.
One of the things I want most for my children is that they feel safe, both physically and emotionally. I them to know no matter what they do they are loved and accepted. Even when they break something, or hit someone (ahem, like me or my wife), or throw something. We’ll figure it out.
That emotional security allows them to try new things, to grow in new directions. Like this week, when we got invited to an impromptu birthday party1 for another kid in Big Kid’s class and we went spontaneously, and they played together. Friends, this was a huge milestone for our cutie. He’s a kid who struggles a lot with sudden changes in a plan, who gets overwhelmed by other children’s erratic behavior or loud noises. But that afternoon he just rolled with it. He ran around with his friend, they blew bubbles at each other, they did a Paw Patrol puzzle, they ate a million cupcakes and popsicles—it was glorious.
One of the (many) things that keeps me up at night is the thought that our Big Kid’s struggles with sensory perception and emotional regulation will keep him from making friends. He hasn’t really made very many yet. But on that day, he told me the birthday boy was his best friend. And my heart sang.
Afterwards, as he crashed from the overstimulation and fell very deeply asleep, I thought we must be doing something right. And I think that something is helping him feel safe and grounded in the little things, like routines, so he can go out on a limb with the big things, like playing with new kids.
So that’s the good news. The bad news, my loves, is that as far as physical safety is concerned, many parents have very little control. It was not a good week for kids in the United States and Israel. Actually, it hasn’t been a good week in a while. The United States has had 213 mass shootings thus far in 2023, with a total of 318 children under the age of 11 killed or injured and 1,883 teens killed or injured. It’s only mid-May.
This week, the news cycle was dominated by the horrific story of the three-year-old boy who was killed along with his parents in a Texas mall. They are survived by their six-year-old son and brother. After we read about that, my wife and I lay awake in our bed until long after midnight. I was thinking hard about dropping off Big Kid at his public school in the morning. Thinking about the security guards and whether they new how to wrest a gun from a shooter’s hands.
That shit is not normal.
Meanwhile, back home in Israel, children are being terrorized, injured, and/or killed by either Hamas rockets or an IDF strike, depending on which side of the ill-defined border you happen to be. According to reporting by Haaretz, “30 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched Operation Shield and Arrow earlier this week – including six children and three women. Almost 100 people have been wounded, including 32 children and 17 women.” Al Jazeera reported that 800 rockets had been fired at Israeli populations, wreaking havoc to homes and building and injuring civilians across the south and central regions of the country2.
Both outlets reported that ceasefire talks aren't going anywhere just yet, which comes as no surprise as leaders on both sides say make infuriating statements that are no help at all. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a known racist and homophobe who claimed recently that there’s no such thing as a Palestinian people, said that Israel may be “forced to take back control of the Gaza strip,” a sentence that raises bile in my belly. He and many others in this extremist government have always wanted to control all the land, including Gaza, despite the fact that most Israelis do not want a Gaza takeover, according to polling by The Israel Democracy Institute. To pretend that this is a new idea that suddenly came to them in the last week is preposterous.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) issued a statement saying that Israel was wholly responsible for the action which ‘crossed every line,’ and that the response would not be long in coming, and would “show no mercy.” I admit that I do not know as much about the leadership in question here, but I think we can all agree that this statement is, likewise, unsurprising, unhelpful, and freaking terrifying.
That shit is not normal either.
As a parent in the U.S. whose best friends and cousins send their kids to school every day in Israel, I feel helpless and enraged this week, which is not a great combination. I’m angry that our leaders can’t work this shit out. I wrote about this back in 2021, during another brief and destructive war back home. Then, I wrote that “it doesn’t matter which side you’re on — if you’re clasping your child to your chest and praying for the bombs to spare your family, you’ve already lost.” I still stand by that statement.
Except now it’s two years later. Many more have died, been injured, been traumatized by gun violence and war. Many more parents have been unable to provide what we all want for our children, above all—physical and emotional safety.
Our leaders owe us more than they’re giving us. We gave them their jobs, dammit. The least they can do is let us send our kids to school without worrying about bomb shelters or active shooter drills.
There’s a lot more I could say about this, as you may imagine, but this is getting kind of long. Still, I’ll say one thing more. I hold a lot of anxiety when I write about these topics, contentious as they are. And I respect the hell out of the passion that folks feel when it comes to our kids’ safety. If you would like to discuss this further with me, I’m here for it as long as you are respectful and kind while doing so. My heart simply can’t handle anything else.
Through discussion comes growth, and I’m all about growing together.
Wishing you a shabbat shalom,
Mikhal
Reading
I don’t have a ton of reading recommendations this week. But I do suggest you read this lovely poem called Ojai by
, a gripping essay by my dear friend Samantha Mann about bodily autonomy and women's health, which was published in the The Cut, and this essay about finding oneself in mid-life published in and written by . I also finished reading The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson, which was wonderful and heartbreaking and gorgeously written. I know it’s a few years old and I’m late to the party, but there you have it. This is a book I will definitely be reading over and over again.Also, I published the first in our Dreams of Chaos series, an interview with actor and filmmaker Mor Cohen about why her career is inherently chaotic and how learning about her ADHD has been a path to self-compassion and acceptance. It was a great conversation! You, too, can enjoy Mor’s thoughts if you grab yourself a paid subscription or a free trial. Go ahead, you know you want to.
It was also my birthday this week! I turned 37 and didn’t even have a crisis about who I am now and what kind of adult I want to be. Look, I’m growing.
I am intentionally quoting what might be seen as opposite-view sources for these numbers, kind of as a paradigm shift and to highlight the fact that Israeli publications do report on Palestinian losses and vice versa.