My daughter is seven. She has inherited a lot of things from me (blue, eyes, blonde hair, freckles) but she is, more than anything else, her father’s girl and she’s got all the quirks to prove it, including a mean nail biting habit. During a recent manicure session (for her siblings), we had the following discussion:
Daughter: Mommy why do ladies have those long lady nails?
Son: To scratch good with.
Me: Maybe. (and then to son) Please give me your hand.
Daughter: Sometimes girls in my class have nails like that.
Me: That’s inappropriate. (and then to son) Give me your hand - Now! (and to toddler) Give Mommy the nail clippers.
Daughter: When I see nails like that, I sometimes really want to eat them.
Hmm - how bad would it be if I gave son’s hand to daughter and let her chew on it?
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Monday, April 21, 2008
Chores
Ok, I just stumbled on this charming little article by Ann Matturro Gault - "Chores and Fun in the Same Breath? You Bet! Here 9 ideas for getting kids to beat you at the cleaning game." While the nine tips below are probably quite helpful (in someone else's house), I've added my own commentary (in bold), if only to round things out a bit. Just to give credit where credit is due, click here for the original article.
1. Hide treats, stickers, or pennies in, on, or under knickknacks, then ask your child to dust. She gets to enjoy the rewards only when everything is dusted. Kudos to Gault for recognizing that these are tough financial times, no longer can we afford the luxuries of the bi-monthly visit from our "ladies" ("my lady" means only two things in middle class housewife speak -cleaning lady or therapist; if one goes to see "her lady," that's her therapist, if "her lady" makes house calls, she's got someone cleaning her bathroom). Now the only money we've got for cleaning services comes from the penny jar and we've got our kids on the job. That's cute and clever except for one thing, if you are going to put in the time to hide the pennies, wouldn't it be smarter just to do the dusting yourself?
2. Post individual lists of chores kids can do (one for each child in your family). Whenever your child accomplishes a task, have her mark it with a sticker. Whoever has the most stickers at the end of the week gets the Helper of the Week award. Is that like a Pulitzer?
3. Play "Go Fish" with a basket of clean socks. Divide the socks among the players, leaving a pile to draw from. Each player, in turn, holds up a sock and asks another player if he has the mate. If not, the asking player must take a sock from the top of the draw pile. When finished, the player with the most pairs wins. This is hilarious. Let's talk about logistics - do you match holes? stains? Can you make a book of socks? Do you get extra for collecting all the socks that came in the original jumbo pack? Who deals (cause if I'm gonna take the time to deal - I'm gonna go ahead and sort those socks myself)? And then there is the other thing, my kids don't like playing Go Fish - if you can come up with sock sorting Uno we might be game.
4. Turn any socks that stay single into child-friendly dust mitts. Insert child's hand into clean but dampened sock and use it to remove dust from houseplants and furniture. I don't get it, if I use all the unpaired socks as dust mits, what the hell are my kids gonna put on their feet in the morning? Plus, you're supposed to dust plants?
5. Have a scavenger hunt. Make a list of everyday items (newspapers, magazine, shoes, etc.). Set a timer for 5 minutes, then have kids collect stray items throughout the house. The winner is the child who picks up the most (and returns them to their rightful spots). Newspapers? Magazines? Shoes? Please! How about: socks and sippy cups, half eaten Go -Gurt tubes, sticks and rocks (yes inside), unused but dried up wipes, melted chapstick, mommy's jewelry, marker tops, legos, broken crayons, snow pants, a jar of dead potato bugs, oh and random pairs of underwear (boys or girls) behind the bathroom sink, or underneath the family room couch?
6. After dinner, do a "10-Minute Tidy." Set a timer and have family members scatter through the house putting away the day's clutter. Let me run through what would happen during the "10-Minute Tidy" at our house: Seven year old, picks up six pencils and then walks past four-year old brother and says - "Bunneri! Electrify!!" to which four year old is forced to respond "Pikachu! - Quick Attack," imaginary Pokemon battle ensues, which means that pencils are dropped, marbles are thrown, pillows are mysteriously, "necessarily" transported from family room to living room. Meanwhile, toddler discovers pile of dirt from freshly swept kitchen floor, plops down next to it and starts snacking on cheerios, soggy pretzels, and month old skittles, dirt pile is summarily decimated, broom is dropped and mommy goes to get a beer. And where's daddy? Upstairs in the master bath, doing requisite post-dinner, 10-Minute intestinal Tidy."
7. Appoint someone to be Inspector D. Clutter. Armed with a laundry basket and plastic police badge from the dress-up box, this person roams the house and puts stray belongings into clutter "jail" (the basket). To set an item free, its owner (Mom and Dad included!) must do a chore. Costumes, jail, handcuffs -this sounds borderline racy to me.
8. Turn a bucket into a personalized cleaning caddy. Use permanent marker to write your child's name on it and have him decorate its with other drawings. Store supplies such as sponge, dust rag and roll of paper towels, etc. Then use supplies such as sponge, dust rag, and roll of paper towels to clean up everything that kid drew on with permanent marker.
9. Show them the money? Some experts believe allowance should be reserved for teenagers. School-aged children will easily get behind the idea that chores are something you do as a member of the family — not for money." They'll be excited just to show off their skill at completing a task. " I'm not so sure about that. I mean when my kids get their weekly allowances, they look pretty excited about getting paid for their skills at completing a task. They take their money and carry it around, they count it and caress, and treat it like, well like money. What my kids "get behind" is that chores are a means to an end, and that end is whole bunch of money. So what if they're planning on using that money to build a super-powerful car that can fly and become invisible and shoot out a trailer of the back end and lasers out of the sides? As long as their rooms are clean, I'm not going to comment.
1. Hide treats, stickers, or pennies in, on, or under knickknacks, then ask your child to dust. She gets to enjoy the rewards only when everything is dusted. Kudos to Gault for recognizing that these are tough financial times, no longer can we afford the luxuries of the bi-monthly visit from our "ladies" ("my lady" means only two things in middle class housewife speak -cleaning lady or therapist; if one goes to see "her lady," that's her therapist, if "her lady" makes house calls, she's got someone cleaning her bathroom). Now the only money we've got for cleaning services comes from the penny jar and we've got our kids on the job. That's cute and clever except for one thing, if you are going to put in the time to hide the pennies, wouldn't it be smarter just to do the dusting yourself?
2. Post individual lists of chores kids can do (one for each child in your family). Whenever your child accomplishes a task, have her mark it with a sticker. Whoever has the most stickers at the end of the week gets the Helper of the Week award. Is that like a Pulitzer?
3. Play "Go Fish" with a basket of clean socks. Divide the socks among the players, leaving a pile to draw from. Each player, in turn, holds up a sock and asks another player if he has the mate. If not, the asking player must take a sock from the top of the draw pile. When finished, the player with the most pairs wins. This is hilarious. Let's talk about logistics - do you match holes? stains? Can you make a book of socks? Do you get extra for collecting all the socks that came in the original jumbo pack? Who deals (cause if I'm gonna take the time to deal - I'm gonna go ahead and sort those socks myself)? And then there is the other thing, my kids don't like playing Go Fish - if you can come up with sock sorting Uno we might be game.
4. Turn any socks that stay single into child-friendly dust mitts. Insert child's hand into clean but dampened sock and use it to remove dust from houseplants and furniture. I don't get it, if I use all the unpaired socks as dust mits, what the hell are my kids gonna put on their feet in the morning? Plus, you're supposed to dust plants?
5. Have a scavenger hunt. Make a list of everyday items (newspapers, magazine, shoes, etc.). Set a timer for 5 minutes, then have kids collect stray items throughout the house. The winner is the child who picks up the most (and returns them to their rightful spots). Newspapers? Magazines? Shoes? Please! How about: socks and sippy cups, half eaten Go -Gurt tubes, sticks and rocks (yes inside), unused but dried up wipes, melted chapstick, mommy's jewelry, marker tops, legos, broken crayons, snow pants, a jar of dead potato bugs, oh and random pairs of underwear (boys or girls) behind the bathroom sink, or underneath the family room couch?
6. After dinner, do a "10-Minute Tidy." Set a timer and have family members scatter through the house putting away the day's clutter. Let me run through what would happen during the "10-Minute Tidy" at our house: Seven year old, picks up six pencils and then walks past four-year old brother and says - "Bunneri! Electrify!!" to which four year old is forced to respond "Pikachu! - Quick Attack," imaginary Pokemon battle ensues, which means that pencils are dropped, marbles are thrown, pillows are mysteriously, "necessarily" transported from family room to living room. Meanwhile, toddler discovers pile of dirt from freshly swept kitchen floor, plops down next to it and starts snacking on cheerios, soggy pretzels, and month old skittles, dirt pile is summarily decimated, broom is dropped and mommy goes to get a beer. And where's daddy? Upstairs in the master bath, doing requisite post-dinner, 10-Minute intestinal Tidy."
7. Appoint someone to be Inspector D. Clutter. Armed with a laundry basket and plastic police badge from the dress-up box, this person roams the house and puts stray belongings into clutter "jail" (the basket). To set an item free, its owner (Mom and Dad included!) must do a chore. Costumes, jail, handcuffs -this sounds borderline racy to me.
8. Turn a bucket into a personalized cleaning caddy. Use permanent marker to write your child's name on it and have him decorate its with other drawings. Store supplies such as sponge, dust rag and roll of paper towels, etc. Then use supplies such as sponge, dust rag, and roll of paper towels to clean up everything that kid drew on with permanent marker.
9. Show them the money? Some experts believe allowance should be reserved for teenagers. School-aged children will easily get behind the idea that chores are something you do as a member of the family — not for money." They'll be excited just to show off their skill at completing a task. " I'm not so sure about that. I mean when my kids get their weekly allowances, they look pretty excited about getting paid for their skills at completing a task. They take their money and carry it around, they count it and caress, and treat it like, well like money. What my kids "get behind" is that chores are a means to an end, and that end is whole bunch of money. So what if they're planning on using that money to build a super-powerful car that can fly and become invisible and shoot out a trailer of the back end and lasers out of the sides? As long as their rooms are clean, I'm not going to comment.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
My Ecofesto
Green is hot! It’s trendy and sexy and political and powerful! I want to be GREEN! I want to love the earth so much that it makes Al Gore look like a Republican. I want to single-handedly stop Global Warming, repair that hole in the O-zone layer and feed the world’s hungry.
Unfortunately, I’m busy raising three kids, so I have to squeeze in my environmentalism when I can.
Here’s how I do it:
1. Skip Baths. For some parents, bathtime is an essential part of the bedtime routine. In this house, the part where I shut the door and walk out is the only essential part. Baths are optional, and the best option for the earth is to limit them to once or twice every week or two.
2. Cook Less. Raw foods preserve nutrients, that’s better for my kids right? Plus limiting cooking means limiting the energy used to actually cook the food and the resources used to clean up afterwards.
3. Limit Cleaning. Cleaning involves harmful chemicals like bleach and other terrible bleach-like substances. Keeping your house looking shiny and new, means dumping countless poisons into our atmosphere. That doesn’t seem right does it?
4. Limit Laundry. You know how going a couple of weeks between washings prolongs the fit (and life) of your jeans? Start taking that approach to all your laundry. One or two or three wearings doesn’t make anything but underwear truly dirty. Just ask my husband, he wears the same clothes over and over again for weeks at a time (he did this even before I became and eco-warrior). Holding off on doing the laundry can save you a ton of water, a ton of gas, some detergent and a whole lot of time. Plus, not doing laundry means not folding laundry, and c’mon isn’t that every housewife’s dream?
5. Car Pool - The advantages of sharing a ride are almost infinite (a la Xavier, anything over five is infinite). Car pooling saves gas, reduces emissions, slows tires from hitting landfills… but car pooling means that someone else can pick up my kid, and then a different someone can drop her off, and if I work it right (like my college roommate did with the divvying up of essay questions on take-home exams) I can spread the driving over enough other parents that I don’t actually have to drive anyone anywhere. And then there’s the whole grown-ups driving other grown-ups thing where refusing to drive on girls night out isn’t selfish, its green!
6. Recycle. Obviously you should recycle. But recycling goes beyond pop cans and beer bottles and cereal boxes. Recycling means reusing all sorts of things over and over again, like using the pretzels your kid left in their lunchbox on Monday as the pretzels in your kids’ lunch box on Tuesday (and Wednesday if necessary). Or using the picture your kid drew you for mother’s day that says "I love you Mom" and changing it to "I love you Grandmom" to cover your own mother’s day obligations.
7. Recycle Some More. Let your kids take on some of the recycling. Especially at snack time, in the car. I happen to know that "Found Objects" are a very hip and happening part of the new Green movement. Helping out Mother Nature feels so good, let your kids discover that special feeling as they scrounge for their very own found snacks - between the seats, under the floor mats, in that hollow part of the car seat base. Whoever made the five second rule did not love the earth as much as I do.
Unfortunately, I’m busy raising three kids, so I have to squeeze in my environmentalism when I can.
Here’s how I do it:
1. Skip Baths. For some parents, bathtime is an essential part of the bedtime routine. In this house, the part where I shut the door and walk out is the only essential part. Baths are optional, and the best option for the earth is to limit them to once or twice every week or two.
2. Cook Less. Raw foods preserve nutrients, that’s better for my kids right? Plus limiting cooking means limiting the energy used to actually cook the food and the resources used to clean up afterwards.
3. Limit Cleaning. Cleaning involves harmful chemicals like bleach and other terrible bleach-like substances. Keeping your house looking shiny and new, means dumping countless poisons into our atmosphere. That doesn’t seem right does it?
4. Limit Laundry. You know how going a couple of weeks between washings prolongs the fit (and life) of your jeans? Start taking that approach to all your laundry. One or two or three wearings doesn’t make anything but underwear truly dirty. Just ask my husband, he wears the same clothes over and over again for weeks at a time (he did this even before I became and eco-warrior). Holding off on doing the laundry can save you a ton of water, a ton of gas, some detergent and a whole lot of time. Plus, not doing laundry means not folding laundry, and c’mon isn’t that every housewife’s dream?
5. Car Pool - The advantages of sharing a ride are almost infinite (a la Xavier, anything over five is infinite). Car pooling saves gas, reduces emissions, slows tires from hitting landfills… but car pooling means that someone else can pick up my kid, and then a different someone can drop her off, and if I work it right (like my college roommate did with the divvying up of essay questions on take-home exams) I can spread the driving over enough other parents that I don’t actually have to drive anyone anywhere. And then there’s the whole grown-ups driving other grown-ups thing where refusing to drive on girls night out isn’t selfish, its green!
6. Recycle. Obviously you should recycle. But recycling goes beyond pop cans and beer bottles and cereal boxes. Recycling means reusing all sorts of things over and over again, like using the pretzels your kid left in their lunchbox on Monday as the pretzels in your kids’ lunch box on Tuesday (and Wednesday if necessary). Or using the picture your kid drew you for mother’s day that says "I love you Mom" and changing it to "I love you Grandmom" to cover your own mother’s day obligations.
7. Recycle Some More. Let your kids take on some of the recycling. Especially at snack time, in the car. I happen to know that "Found Objects" are a very hip and happening part of the new Green movement. Helping out Mother Nature feels so good, let your kids discover that special feeling as they scrounge for their very own found snacks - between the seats, under the floor mats, in that hollow part of the car seat base. Whoever made the five second rule did not love the earth as much as I do.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
"I Am So Lucky!!"
There are some days you wake up and look at your kids and immediately think "I am so lucky." But most days you wake up and look at your kids and think "What am I gonna feed these kids for breakfast, where the hell are their gym shoes and how soon can I get them to school?" Monday morning I was thinking pretty much that. Until I opened the newspaper and read a little blurb about Nicole Lynn Holmes of Belle Vernon Pennsylvania. The mother of two was recently arrested and charged with child endangerment, after she sent her two children to school with head lice. My immediate response to this news was, "I am so lucky!"
When I consider some of the things that have happened in our house, especially concerning head lice, its a wonder that I haven’t landed in jail like Nicole.
We have had one bout with head lice thus far. It was this past fall. And I can say with some authority that if there is any experience in parenting ( in addition to potty training) that will almost certainly cause you to develop PTSD, it is dealing with head lice.
The first thing you should know about head lice is that the very second you learn your child has been exposed to head lice and potentially adopted a few of their own, your ability to think rationally is immediately suppressed by a terrible itching that begins on your head and quickly spreads throughout your body. Whatever decisions are made, whatever actions are taken, after the mention of lice, are not those of a rational, responsible adult, they are the desperate moves of a mother trying to wage battle on a tiny army of basically invisible parasites (and the asshole who gave them to your child in the first place).
Coping with head lice is a dirty, dirty business. It will force you to throw every rule you have about bribing your kids out the window. You will do anything to get your kids to sit still and smile (ok not smile, just not scream or bite you) during the hours it takes to check your child’s head for a single nit. You will let your kids watch hours of tv, not just PBS or Noggin but Disney Tween Trash like the "That’s So Suite Life of Hannah Montana" marathon, just so you can comb through their hair in order to confirm your worst fears. You will let your child eat anything they want just so they will agree to allow you to play "beauty shop" for the couple of hours it will take to apply specially formulated poison - the shampoo equivalent of napalm- to your child’s scalp. You will shove candy, any kind of candy, into your child’s mouth just so that you don’t have to listen to them scream "you’re hurting me!" as you yank their individual hair shafts around in hopes of removing any remaining nits.
In short, you will sell your soul to the devil just to get your kids to through the overwhelmingly tedious, unpleasant, downright disgusting task of checking and treating them for lice.
And if you’re too holy to sell your soul to make it through that, you sure as hell will give it all up, just for the hope that one of those critters won’t jump ship and start a colony on your own head.
And all this is assuming you can actually talk your kids into sitting still and letting you even look for lice. If that’s not an option, you will resort to physical intimidation or violence or smothering your child just to make them hold still long enough for you to get a peak at their scalp in good light.
And just to add insult to injury, you will have to force your kids to march to their rooms and round up all the animals, or babies, or blankets that they have come to depend on and hand them over to you so you can lock them up in airtight containers for two weeks. If that’s not the Sophie’s Choice of childhood, I don’t know what is.
After a while, you will be exhausted by your battle with head lice. And because, unless you have eyes with super microscope-like powers that can somehow identify tiny dots for the little crustaceans that they are, at some point you will have to quit your battle against the lice and with a hope and a prayer that they really are gone, send your kids back to school and hope they know enough to not declare - "I stayed home yesterday because I got the lice!" over lunch.
So it’s not that hard for me to see how a mother like Nicole Holmes, could end up doing a simple little thing, like sending her kids back to school with a few live ones running around on their tiny heads. And it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that she is not the first mother to have done something like that.
Its just unfortunate for Nicole that social services was already on the look out for any missteps with her kids. It turns out that the county had already been to Nicole’s house, when a neighbor who visited Nicole uninvited, complained that she found Nicole "passed out while her unkempt children roamed the house."
And when I read that I found that I can consider myself double lucky- because not only have I never never been singled out by the law for my children's dalliances with head lice, but I’m not friendly enough with any of my neighbors to worry about them dropping by while I’m "napping."
When I consider some of the things that have happened in our house, especially concerning head lice, its a wonder that I haven’t landed in jail like Nicole.
We have had one bout with head lice thus far. It was this past fall. And I can say with some authority that if there is any experience in parenting ( in addition to potty training) that will almost certainly cause you to develop PTSD, it is dealing with head lice.
The first thing you should know about head lice is that the very second you learn your child has been exposed to head lice and potentially adopted a few of their own, your ability to think rationally is immediately suppressed by a terrible itching that begins on your head and quickly spreads throughout your body. Whatever decisions are made, whatever actions are taken, after the mention of lice, are not those of a rational, responsible adult, they are the desperate moves of a mother trying to wage battle on a tiny army of basically invisible parasites (and the asshole who gave them to your child in the first place).
Coping with head lice is a dirty, dirty business. It will force you to throw every rule you have about bribing your kids out the window. You will do anything to get your kids to sit still and smile (ok not smile, just not scream or bite you) during the hours it takes to check your child’s head for a single nit. You will let your kids watch hours of tv, not just PBS or Noggin but Disney Tween Trash like the "That’s So Suite Life of Hannah Montana" marathon, just so you can comb through their hair in order to confirm your worst fears. You will let your child eat anything they want just so they will agree to allow you to play "beauty shop" for the couple of hours it will take to apply specially formulated poison - the shampoo equivalent of napalm- to your child’s scalp. You will shove candy, any kind of candy, into your child’s mouth just so that you don’t have to listen to them scream "you’re hurting me!" as you yank their individual hair shafts around in hopes of removing any remaining nits.
In short, you will sell your soul to the devil just to get your kids to through the overwhelmingly tedious, unpleasant, downright disgusting task of checking and treating them for lice.
And if you’re too holy to sell your soul to make it through that, you sure as hell will give it all up, just for the hope that one of those critters won’t jump ship and start a colony on your own head.
And all this is assuming you can actually talk your kids into sitting still and letting you even look for lice. If that’s not an option, you will resort to physical intimidation or violence or smothering your child just to make them hold still long enough for you to get a peak at their scalp in good light.
And just to add insult to injury, you will have to force your kids to march to their rooms and round up all the animals, or babies, or blankets that they have come to depend on and hand them over to you so you can lock them up in airtight containers for two weeks. If that’s not the Sophie’s Choice of childhood, I don’t know what is.
After a while, you will be exhausted by your battle with head lice. And because, unless you have eyes with super microscope-like powers that can somehow identify tiny dots for the little crustaceans that they are, at some point you will have to quit your battle against the lice and with a hope and a prayer that they really are gone, send your kids back to school and hope they know enough to not declare - "I stayed home yesterday because I got the lice!" over lunch.
So it’s not that hard for me to see how a mother like Nicole Holmes, could end up doing a simple little thing, like sending her kids back to school with a few live ones running around on their tiny heads. And it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that she is not the first mother to have done something like that.
Its just unfortunate for Nicole that social services was already on the look out for any missteps with her kids. It turns out that the county had already been to Nicole’s house, when a neighbor who visited Nicole uninvited, complained that she found Nicole "passed out while her unkempt children roamed the house."
And when I read that I found that I can consider myself double lucky- because not only have I never never been singled out by the law for my children's dalliances with head lice, but I’m not friendly enough with any of my neighbors to worry about them dropping by while I’m "napping."
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Sometimes, Some Things Come Full Circle
I was at my kids' school today for a meeting. On the way out the door, I noticed a picture of Maria Montessori. The fact that Montessori classrooms and schools have pictures of the method's founder all over the place is usually something I try to ignore (it somehow reminds me of the Kim Jong Il PR machine, except not as ridiculously entertaining). Anyway, Dr. Montessori may have had an uncanny ability to understand the minds of children and she did create an educational method for which we are happy to pay thousands of dollars each year to expose our children to, but from the looks of these pictures, beauty was not one of her top attributes. The funny thing is the picture of Maria Montessori looked eerily similar to another picture I recently saw - the one of the lady with freaky long hair of "what would happen if someones hair was so super long it touched the ground fame" - see below. I'll let you be the judge, but now I'm pretty sure which long-haired hippie it was that inspired my son's original inquiry.
Monday, April 7, 2008
My Own Unanswerable Question
What is the point of going all the way to the upstairs bathroom (next to the bedroom where your baby sister is napping) and yelling "Mommy" at the top of your lungs, only to tell your mother, when she responds to your calls of distress, "NO, DON'T SEE ME MOMMY!"?
Is it so your mother can be the very first one to find out that you didn't flush the toilet yet again?
Is it so your mother can be the very first one to find out that you didn't flush the toilet yet again?
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Coping Mechanisms
It’s no secret that parenting is tough, a lot tougher than any of us expected. On our best days, raising kids can be, for the most part, pretty mundane - routine and with any luck, uneventful. More often, childrearing (and for the sake of this blog, motherhood) is incredibly frustrating. The job is dirty and thankless. Sure, parenting is a unique and fabulous and worthy and incredibly rewarding experience, but the tricky thing is that we tend to only notice that part of it in retrospect.
So what can we do to keep our chins up during the here and now of parenting? Over the years I have cultivated a limited but effective arsenal for coping with the worst parts of parenting. Sure I’ve tried the basic tricks for navigating particularly tough situations. Let’s say baby is screaming inconsolably, every fiber of your being wants to shake baby (but somewhere you heard that that might be a bad idea), you put baby down and count to ten silently, and then baby is magically quiet and happy and fed and wearing a clean diaper…
But somehow conventional coping mechanisms seem to fall just a bit short. Here are the two the things that work for me in particularly tough situations.
First there is vacuuming. Vacuuming really is the perfect foil for mother-homemakers caught in the midst of parenting’s ugliest and loudest situations. Vacuuming is a great choice for any situation that involves any amount of noise. Take the crying baby example from above. Let’s say instead of counting to ten, you grab your vacuum and head for the nearest carpet, not only do you not have to listen to your baby crying, you are getting something done! Feelings of guilt and inadequacy over not being able to console your child are immediately canceled out by feelings of accomplishment (your cleaning!) and peace (the neat hum of the vacuum cleaner drowns out the little one’s wailing). This trick never wears out. The more kids you have, the more opportunities you’ll have to use vacuuming to drown out their crying, their whining, their fights and their tantrums. And the more kids you have, the dirtier your carpets will be. It’s almost the perfect solution.
Second, is a little imagination game I like to play. If it had a name, it would be called "What if a Grown Up Did This?" It’s pretty simple. When I am faced with my children doing particularly annoying, ridiculous things I simply ask myself - "what if a grown up did this?" Almost instantly, the outlandish behavior of my children becomes incredibly entertaining, sheer hilarity.
Even without your kids engaging in any specific behavior, this can be a useful coping mechanism. Just look at what your kids are wearing and try to imagine an adult in the same outfit. For those of you with babies in onesies, this can be especially effective (unless you don’t want to be reminded of early 90’s fashion a-la Brenda Walsh). Here are some of the most common situations I find my kids in, each annoying in their own right, but incredibly funny when you imagine an adult engaging in the same behavior.
My younger daughter loves to eat. Other people’s food. With her hands. If she sees anyone enjoying a meal, she just can’t help herself, she’s got to see for herself if its worth it (nine times out of ten it is for this kid) She’ll climb right into your lap and dig in. Literally, dig in, with her grimy little hands. This habit really gets me. I have no trouble sharing chips or pretzels with her. It’s the things like soup or salad that really get under my skin. To avoid becoming overly frustrated (I don’t want to squelch her enthusiasm for new foods, it could lead her to the all -colorless-starch diet my four year old has been on for the past two years), I allow myself to consider the possibility of an adult woman jumping up on my lap and helping herself to my tossed salad with her hands. And the woman was singing a little song that sounded like a lullaby but with the lyrics of "chicken nugget, chicken nugget, cucumber" the whole time she was digging through the salad.
When my younger daughter isn’t eating my real food, she’s busy making us all pretend to eat her fake food. This involves a lot of time hanging out in her little tykes cottage and simulating chewing and sipping and licking of things. Often, she is very insistent that she has adult company at these little dinner parties. Sitting scrunched up in a house built for toddlers and drinking invisible diet coke can get old pretty quick Especially when just outside the house are piles of laundry that need to be folded and a new US Weekly with breaking news about Reese and Jake. But just when I feel myself starting to lose patience with the situation, I use my little imagination trick. Just the thought of hanging out with an adult woman who drinks imaginary beverages, is fascinated by the doorbell to her own home, and sometimes, without warning, starts licking the walls of her house, is enough to warrant a few good belly laughs. No need for that Us Weekly now, you’re watching the headlines unfold in your own family room!
My son spends a lot of his time lying down, on his stomach, hands tucked under his front. I am not sure what the attraction is to spending so much of the day that way, but my husband assure me it is normal behavior. I like to instill a sense of responsibility in my kids, so I try to ask them to do easier things for themselves. For example, I’ll ask my son to go to his room and find himself a pair of socks. When he hasn’t returned after twenty minutes (and his two sisters are waiting in a running car), I’ll go up to his room to see what the delay is about. Inevitably, he’ll be lying-face down under his train table, barefoot. Now this I a situation which has a lot of potential to piss me off, the kid is making us all wait, and he’s not even accomplishing anything… but to avoid flipping out, I ask myself - "what if a grown up were doing this?" and then things turn pretty funny. What if you walked into a room and a grown man (wearing a pajama shirt two sizes too small and a pair of plaid flannels) was lying barefoot and face-down under a train table? That would be ridiculous! That would be hilarious! In fact, that might have actually happened to Robert Downey Jr. circa 1999.
I think you’ll find this trick helpful, if only to give yourself a little breathing and laughing room, in what can often be a terribly boring and frustrating job. What’s more, when you start to look at your kids antics on an adult scale, you may find what I have, there’s something like a young-hollywood-meets-SNL vibe going on in your own house. With a little lite beer (another of my not so secret weapons) that can make parenting pretty darn entertaining!
So what can we do to keep our chins up during the here and now of parenting? Over the years I have cultivated a limited but effective arsenal for coping with the worst parts of parenting. Sure I’ve tried the basic tricks for navigating particularly tough situations. Let’s say baby is screaming inconsolably, every fiber of your being wants to shake baby (but somewhere you heard that that might be a bad idea), you put baby down and count to ten silently, and then baby is magically quiet and happy and fed and wearing a clean diaper…
But somehow conventional coping mechanisms seem to fall just a bit short. Here are the two the things that work for me in particularly tough situations.
First there is vacuuming. Vacuuming really is the perfect foil for mother-homemakers caught in the midst of parenting’s ugliest and loudest situations. Vacuuming is a great choice for any situation that involves any amount of noise. Take the crying baby example from above. Let’s say instead of counting to ten, you grab your vacuum and head for the nearest carpet, not only do you not have to listen to your baby crying, you are getting something done! Feelings of guilt and inadequacy over not being able to console your child are immediately canceled out by feelings of accomplishment (your cleaning!) and peace (the neat hum of the vacuum cleaner drowns out the little one’s wailing). This trick never wears out. The more kids you have, the more opportunities you’ll have to use vacuuming to drown out their crying, their whining, their fights and their tantrums. And the more kids you have, the dirtier your carpets will be. It’s almost the perfect solution.
Second, is a little imagination game I like to play. If it had a name, it would be called "What if a Grown Up Did This?" It’s pretty simple. When I am faced with my children doing particularly annoying, ridiculous things I simply ask myself - "what if a grown up did this?" Almost instantly, the outlandish behavior of my children becomes incredibly entertaining, sheer hilarity.
Even without your kids engaging in any specific behavior, this can be a useful coping mechanism. Just look at what your kids are wearing and try to imagine an adult in the same outfit. For those of you with babies in onesies, this can be especially effective (unless you don’t want to be reminded of early 90’s fashion a-la Brenda Walsh). Here are some of the most common situations I find my kids in, each annoying in their own right, but incredibly funny when you imagine an adult engaging in the same behavior.
My younger daughter loves to eat. Other people’s food. With her hands. If she sees anyone enjoying a meal, she just can’t help herself, she’s got to see for herself if its worth it (nine times out of ten it is for this kid) She’ll climb right into your lap and dig in. Literally, dig in, with her grimy little hands. This habit really gets me. I have no trouble sharing chips or pretzels with her. It’s the things like soup or salad that really get under my skin. To avoid becoming overly frustrated (I don’t want to squelch her enthusiasm for new foods, it could lead her to the all -colorless-starch diet my four year old has been on for the past two years), I allow myself to consider the possibility of an adult woman jumping up on my lap and helping herself to my tossed salad with her hands. And the woman was singing a little song that sounded like a lullaby but with the lyrics of "chicken nugget, chicken nugget, cucumber" the whole time she was digging through the salad.
When my younger daughter isn’t eating my real food, she’s busy making us all pretend to eat her fake food. This involves a lot of time hanging out in her little tykes cottage and simulating chewing and sipping and licking of things. Often, she is very insistent that she has adult company at these little dinner parties. Sitting scrunched up in a house built for toddlers and drinking invisible diet coke can get old pretty quick Especially when just outside the house are piles of laundry that need to be folded and a new US Weekly with breaking news about Reese and Jake. But just when I feel myself starting to lose patience with the situation, I use my little imagination trick. Just the thought of hanging out with an adult woman who drinks imaginary beverages, is fascinated by the doorbell to her own home, and sometimes, without warning, starts licking the walls of her house, is enough to warrant a few good belly laughs. No need for that Us Weekly now, you’re watching the headlines unfold in your own family room!
My son spends a lot of his time lying down, on his stomach, hands tucked under his front. I am not sure what the attraction is to spending so much of the day that way, but my husband assure me it is normal behavior. I like to instill a sense of responsibility in my kids, so I try to ask them to do easier things for themselves. For example, I’ll ask my son to go to his room and find himself a pair of socks. When he hasn’t returned after twenty minutes (and his two sisters are waiting in a running car), I’ll go up to his room to see what the delay is about. Inevitably, he’ll be lying-face down under his train table, barefoot. Now this I a situation which has a lot of potential to piss me off, the kid is making us all wait, and he’s not even accomplishing anything… but to avoid flipping out, I ask myself - "what if a grown up were doing this?" and then things turn pretty funny. What if you walked into a room and a grown man (wearing a pajama shirt two sizes too small and a pair of plaid flannels) was lying barefoot and face-down under a train table? That would be ridiculous! That would be hilarious! In fact, that might have actually happened to Robert Downey Jr. circa 1999.
I think you’ll find this trick helpful, if only to give yourself a little breathing and laughing room, in what can often be a terribly boring and frustrating job. What’s more, when you start to look at your kids antics on an adult scale, you may find what I have, there’s something like a young-hollywood-meets-SNL vibe going on in your own house. With a little lite beer (another of my not so secret weapons) that can make parenting pretty darn entertaining!
Friday, April 4, 2008
Overheard in the Kitchen
If you were a fly on the wall at my house, here's what you would overhear:
Four Year Old Boy: "What is the most important part of your body?"
Me: "Your brain"
Four Year Old Boy: "Oh I thought it was your heart"
Me: "Oh that’s important, maybe it is your heart"
Four Year Old Boy (after thirty seconds of consideration) "Yeah if you didn’t have a brain you would just crash into walls and stuff."
Meaningful conversation has a place in my house. I just don't know where it is.
And I obviously don't know the most important part of the human body either.
Four Year Old Boy: "What is the most important part of your body?"
Me: "Your brain"
Four Year Old Boy: "Oh I thought it was your heart"
Me: "Oh that’s important, maybe it is your heart"
Four Year Old Boy (after thirty seconds of consideration) "Yeah if you didn’t have a brain you would just crash into walls and stuff."
Meaningful conversation has a place in my house. I just don't know where it is.
And I obviously don't know the most important part of the human body either.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Britney Spears' Mommy Manual
One of these days Britney Spears is going to get her kids back. I know it will happen, because I have watched a lot of Lifetime, and the mom always gets her kids back in the end, unless the father is Brian Austin Green (and I am telling you, K-Fed is no Brian Austin Green). And I also know that a lot of people are going to be really upset when Britney gets her kids back. They’ll say that no one who feeds her kids Cheetos and Diet Pepsi all day, and lets them stay up until all hours, and sometimes almost drops them on the ground after fashion shows, should be allowed to have custody of her kids. There will be a whole bunch of other people, Brit’s fans for example, who might argue, that the best place for little Sean Preston and Jayden James is with their mother (in her lap, in the front seat of her Mercedes, in the Taco Bell drive-thru).
If my 22 month old daughter were asked, she would likely agree with this group. In fact, if she were really pressed and she actually knew who Britney Spears is, she would probably call her an inspiration, a true parenting mentor. I mean my daughter and Britney Spears have such similar parenting styles, it sometimes seems as if my daughter might have Brit’s number in her fave five on her Hello Kitty plastic cell phone.
A few examples...
Let’s start with the most obvious thing - transportation. While my daughter can’t drive, Santa did bring her a pretty sweet toy stroller and she definitely doesn’t follow safety protocol when taking her babies around. I would say that the appropriate passenger limit for that stroller is two medium sized babies or maybe two smaller babies and a beanie baby. My daughter routinely crams five to ten of her babies in that stroller, sometimes, shoving larger babies on top of tiny ones and sometimes even throwing in dangerous animals like miniature plastic tigers and reindeer into the mix. Once I even saw her pushing four babies and the Hamburglar around in that thing- something about that just didn’t feel right, almost like she had locked her kids in the car with a sex predator. Except that her babies would never be locked in, because just like Brit, my daughter doesn’t believe in using child restraints when transporting her babies. The stroller came with a beautiful beaded seat belt, but my daughter prefers to disconnect the belt and use it to accessorize her own outfits.
On to food. It has been well documented that Britney has a down home girl’s love of junk food and she shares that with her kids whenever she can. It has been noted, mostly in places like US Weekly and various celeb blogs, that Britney has put pop in her boy’s bottles and let them snack on all sorts of gas station favorites like Cheetos and Doritos and Oreos. My daughter may have more limited access to junk food for her babies (she's stuck with whatever is in the fake pantry of her fake kitchen), but she seems to outdo Britney in this department. She feeds her babies nothing but ketchup all day long. Mostly the babies all have to share the same little red ketchup bottle - the tiniest ones sip from it, while the bigger ones are spoon fed ketchup (two shoved in the high chair at a time).
Just like Britney, my daughter struggles with her own nasty habits and addictions. And these struggles certainly impact her parenting choices. My daughter can be fully absorbed in taking care of her babies - putting them in their beds, singing them lullabies- and suddenly she will be overcome with an insurmountable urge to have her own pacifier in her mouth. Poor babies, she will stop whatever caretaking she is doing and discard them immediately. She will run, crazed, to her secret pacifier stash in her crib. If you try to stop her, or remind her that there is an appropriate time and place (bedtime) for her habit, she will become hysterical, sweeping everything in her path, you, her babies, her brothers legos, up in a fit of rage. If that isn’t an addiction, I don’t know what is.
Now let’s talk about bedfellows and male role models. Everyone knows that father figures are important for babies. I think its pretty safe to say that Britney has struggled with giving her boys a consistent, male role model. I mean K-Fed may have stepped up his game in the last nine months, but it was only AFTER Britney went completely over the edge that he really took on his whole fatherhood gig. Britney is always paired up with a different boy and sometimes she can’t even make it through the weekend with the same date. The most consistent, reliable bedfellow my daughter has ever had is a red monster who’s in show business. That doesn’t sound like a role model to me.
And there’s more… At one point a former nanny asserted that Brit doesn’t even like to actually do anything with her kids. She just dresses them up and looks at them for a while and then has the nanny come and take them away when she is tired of them. My daughter does the same thing, she changes a few diapers, maybe trades around pants from baby to baby and redistributes their blankets. But when my daughter tires of her babies, she doesn’t call the nanny, instead she just drops them, abandons them right there, half-naked and clearly hungry for their ketchup.
I’ve seen the way my daughter's friends treat their babies. I can’t help but wonder if they’ve all taken a page from the Britney Spears' Mommy Manual (not to be confused with the book that Lynne Spears, Brit’s mom, was recently said to be working on). One of my daughter’s friends even left a baby at our house and never noticed. Don’t worry, my daughter gets a lot of advice from Angelina Jolie too, so she adopted it.
I’m not saying Britney Spears is a good mother with a bad rap. I’m just saying that there are probably a lot of other little mommies whose parenting skills are pretty similar. And those mommies aren’t wearing underwear either.
If my 22 month old daughter were asked, she would likely agree with this group. In fact, if she were really pressed and she actually knew who Britney Spears is, she would probably call her an inspiration, a true parenting mentor. I mean my daughter and Britney Spears have such similar parenting styles, it sometimes seems as if my daughter might have Brit’s number in her fave five on her Hello Kitty plastic cell phone.
A few examples...
Let’s start with the most obvious thing - transportation. While my daughter can’t drive, Santa did bring her a pretty sweet toy stroller and she definitely doesn’t follow safety protocol when taking her babies around. I would say that the appropriate passenger limit for that stroller is two medium sized babies or maybe two smaller babies and a beanie baby. My daughter routinely crams five to ten of her babies in that stroller, sometimes, shoving larger babies on top of tiny ones and sometimes even throwing in dangerous animals like miniature plastic tigers and reindeer into the mix. Once I even saw her pushing four babies and the Hamburglar around in that thing- something about that just didn’t feel right, almost like she had locked her kids in the car with a sex predator. Except that her babies would never be locked in, because just like Brit, my daughter doesn’t believe in using child restraints when transporting her babies. The stroller came with a beautiful beaded seat belt, but my daughter prefers to disconnect the belt and use it to accessorize her own outfits.
On to food. It has been well documented that Britney has a down home girl’s love of junk food and she shares that with her kids whenever she can. It has been noted, mostly in places like US Weekly and various celeb blogs, that Britney has put pop in her boy’s bottles and let them snack on all sorts of gas station favorites like Cheetos and Doritos and Oreos. My daughter may have more limited access to junk food for her babies (she's stuck with whatever is in the fake pantry of her fake kitchen), but she seems to outdo Britney in this department. She feeds her babies nothing but ketchup all day long. Mostly the babies all have to share the same little red ketchup bottle - the tiniest ones sip from it, while the bigger ones are spoon fed ketchup (two shoved in the high chair at a time).
Just like Britney, my daughter struggles with her own nasty habits and addictions. And these struggles certainly impact her parenting choices. My daughter can be fully absorbed in taking care of her babies - putting them in their beds, singing them lullabies- and suddenly she will be overcome with an insurmountable urge to have her own pacifier in her mouth. Poor babies, she will stop whatever caretaking she is doing and discard them immediately. She will run, crazed, to her secret pacifier stash in her crib. If you try to stop her, or remind her that there is an appropriate time and place (bedtime) for her habit, she will become hysterical, sweeping everything in her path, you, her babies, her brothers legos, up in a fit of rage. If that isn’t an addiction, I don’t know what is.
Now let’s talk about bedfellows and male role models. Everyone knows that father figures are important for babies. I think its pretty safe to say that Britney has struggled with giving her boys a consistent, male role model. I mean K-Fed may have stepped up his game in the last nine months, but it was only AFTER Britney went completely over the edge that he really took on his whole fatherhood gig. Britney is always paired up with a different boy and sometimes she can’t even make it through the weekend with the same date. The most consistent, reliable bedfellow my daughter has ever had is a red monster who’s in show business. That doesn’t sound like a role model to me.
And there’s more… At one point a former nanny asserted that Brit doesn’t even like to actually do anything with her kids. She just dresses them up and looks at them for a while and then has the nanny come and take them away when she is tired of them. My daughter does the same thing, she changes a few diapers, maybe trades around pants from baby to baby and redistributes their blankets. But when my daughter tires of her babies, she doesn’t call the nanny, instead she just drops them, abandons them right there, half-naked and clearly hungry for their ketchup.
I’ve seen the way my daughter's friends treat their babies. I can’t help but wonder if they’ve all taken a page from the Britney Spears' Mommy Manual (not to be confused with the book that Lynne Spears, Brit’s mom, was recently said to be working on). One of my daughter’s friends even left a baby at our house and never noticed. Don’t worry, my daughter gets a lot of advice from Angelina Jolie too, so she adopted it.
I’m not saying Britney Spears is a good mother with a bad rap. I’m just saying that there are probably a lot of other little mommies whose parenting skills are pretty similar. And those mommies aren’t wearing underwear either.
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