I just want them to be happy.

The school year started and I was caught in the undertow. Between a part-time job writing (from which I am happily taking a break!) for pay, my school volunteer commitments, and my children, I have been just treading water for a long time now. But the main thing keeping me overwhelmed: that elusive goal of happy children.

I'm not even sure if "happy children" is a goal I can attain. What do happy children look like? Are they okay with going to bed a little earlier than they hoped? Are they pleased to go to school every morning and happy campers at the end of the school day? Do they acquiesce to homework management without resistance?

If so, my children are NOT happy. But if "happy children" can be grumpy, grouchy, moaning kids, say, 50-60 percent of the time and happy or at least content the remainder of their days? I have at least a shot.


Before this school year began, I will admit I was feeling a little cocky. My kids scored the reputed "very desirable" teachers. I was feeling on my A game. And then, as it usually happens, everything really got underway and the cracks in my system started showing up.

Firstborn is happy in class. His teacher is attuned to him, impressed by him (maybe a little TOO much), and he has friends in his room. He defines school as a happy place. But after a year of struggle, I finally let him drop violin and swimming in favor of a fall season of baseball.

Firstborn LOVES baseball. But baseball doesn't always love Firstborn. And the league we have played in before and now is very competitive and very much Daddyball: political and hotheaded. When sitting in the stands, watching the men huff around the field with their chests puffed out and their middle -aged butts stuffed into uniform pants, I often hear Springsteen songs in my head.

This season, Firstborn aged up into kid-pitch (because third and fourth graders' arms are so ready to pitch seven-inning games) and finds himself among eight, nine, and ten-year-old Athletes. This is basically the pros compared to what he has been doing. Needless to say, he's been in left outfield, kicking the grass. But even more, his coaches have been instructing him not to even swing at the ball, because he has a better chance getting on base if he walks than if he tries to hit.

So we have been struggling with how much to intercede, how much to let it ride, how much to let him figure out for himself that he's not going to play infield or be a star -- maybe ever again. The kids he plays with now have, like, muscles. And Firstborn, despite his armpit hair and increasing need for deodorant, is still gangly and sorting out his limbs. After his first game, in which his coaches sat him out two innings and he hit nothing, he came home and cried, and my heart broke off into eight thousand pieces, but somehow we have survived. I'm beginning to see that disappointment might be not only an inevitable part of the next phase of his childhood, but a necessary one. And I am fortifying myself.

And then their is C., my middle child teddy bear. He was assigned to the "nurturing, sensitive teacher," but that has turned out to be something of a curse. She is certainly sensitive -- sensitive to the fact that C. is not at all engaged in her classroom and that he doesn't like school. C., unlike Firstborn, finds school a drag. He does have friends, and he works hard at that. But the worksheets and the smartboards completely bore him. After two conferences already this year in which his teachers wondered if he is a "gifted underachiever," depressed, an enigma... you name it, I am coming to the conclusion that his teacher has a need to be liked and given attention (by her students) that C. is not giving her, and C. might not thrive in a typical public school classroom. Stay tuned. In the meantime, I don't think he's particularly happy at school, but putting him in a karate class is one of the best things I have done for him lately. It's a work in progress.

The littlest guy just struggles with not wanting to go to school at all. He talks my head off, he wants to hang around the house, and he doesn't want to have to behave himself. Details. He is, overall, happy at the moment. I'll take it.

This parenting thing, it never. gets. easier. It does get different, but it never lets me coast. I don't want to coddle my children, I don't want to spoil my children, I don't want to over-analyze my children. I just want happy children. Could someone please hand over the instruction booklet?