Archive for the ‘parenting’ Category

6 Jun

A Few Words of Wisdom (or Bugs, Volcanoes and Fiery Car Crashes…What? Me Worry?)

Posted by I suck as a parent in boys, family, kids, parenting, Summer travel, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , .

This is my first guest blog. Well, technically it’s not a blog; it’s an email that a friend of mine sent to me and another friend of ours. Our older boys are going to Costa Rica this summer for a couple of weeks. They will be traveling with a very well-respected program and yet, we parents (ok, some of us parents) tend to lean toward catastrophic thinking when it comes to our kids. After we signed up for this trip two things happened: first, the lead story on Yahoo News last week was about the prevalence in Costa Rica of Chagas, a bug whose bite leads to symptoms that mimic the early stages of AIDS and HIV, and, of course, has no cure; and, second, I read that the Turrialba volcano is set to erupt at any moment in Costa Rica which could have significant impact on travel conditions—either the boys will never get in the country or, more disconcerting, the boys won’t get out of the country and they will be living with bugs that cause an incurable infection. Add to this that all three of our boys just started driving and you have a pretty incredible stew of crazy on your hands.

My friend’s email came in response to the latest email frenzy regarding volcanoes and icky bugs and several teenagers recently killed in fiery car crashes. Her email was a wonderful reminder of what our role as parents really is and how little we can control everything:

‘I just learned that a sorority sister of mine (my age, with a 21-year-old son), lost her son in a car accident recently.  He was driving onto the highway in Burr Ridge [Illinois] late at night (a Friday night), and got hit by a truck.  Incredibly sad.

I still believe my kids have a higher probability of being hit by the Domino’s delivery car that comes tearing down our street every Friday/Saturday night as the kids continuously cross the street to play “Ghost in the Graveyard,” but I would never tell them to stop playing this game. I keep telling them to be careful and watchful.

The more experiences we give our kids, the better prepared they will be for life. If we lock them away in our warm, safe homes, they’ll stay children forever.  I tell myself this constantly.  When I was pregnant with my oldest and reading all sorts of parenting books, I came across a book that I’ll always remember.  Its thesis was that from the moment you give birth, your purpose and responsibility as a parent is to prepare your child to leave you.  As cold and hard as that sounded to me, it resonated with me because it made so much sense.

As for the bugs and parasites in Costa Rica, I reminded my son that he’s been through something similar and survived.  When he was 3, we took him to Jamaica and he came back with Subcutanious Larva Migron on his bottom and on the bottoms of his feet.  He was famous at Children’s Memorial Hospital for a while as they showed his butt and feet to all the doctors and interns who were not familiar with these microscopic worms that live and burrow just under the skin and are common in lesser-developed countries. Apparently, the cats there have these worms in their poop. My son and I played in the sand on the beach. There was a two-inch stream of water coming from the land next to the hotel and it cut through the sand and into the ocean. Stray cats must have pooped in the sand next to this stream of water. My son and I put our feet in this seemingly clean water and sat in the damp sand near it. When we got home, his butt looked like it had little red veins running through it…

…Hopefully, [the boys] will use good judgment and common sense, and watch out for each other…and have an incredible time, and have many wonderful stories to tell us when they get back.  I can’t wait to hear the stories…’

3 May

The Secret Life of My Teenage Son

Posted by I suck as a parent in family, kids, parenting, Uncategorized.

My 16-year-old does not tell me everything. I know, shocking, right?

The problem is that until a few months ago he really did tell me everything. I knew what all of his friends were doing (and who they were doing it with), I knew stories about all of his teachers and I knew all of his grades.

My friends told me I was lucky; they also told me that it wouldn’t last.

I would smile and shake my head. ‘No,’ I would tell them, ‘he will always tell me everything.’ And I would secretly savor the knowledge that I had a teenager who wanted to talk to his mom. All the while, my friends were savoring the knowledge that I was delusional.

This became very apparent last week at my younger son’s soccer game.

I was sitting with a woman who mentioned that our older children – her daughter and my oldest son – finally met each other at school.

“Did he talk to her or just grunt in her direction?” I asked because, as far as I knew, my somewhat neurotic 16-year-old didn’t speak to a lot of females.

“They talked for a while,” she said. “Apparently it took them some time to figure out how they knew each other’s names but they eventually put it together.”

That should have been my first clue.

I mentioned this exchange to my son when I got home and that’s when he dropped the next bomb: “Yea, I met her,” he said. “She knows Claudia, who I sit with at lunch.”

Claudia? He sits with girls at lunch!? I was so stunned that I asked him if he said “Claudio”.

“Claudio?” he snapped. “No. Claudia,” he practically spat at me.

I know that he knows girls. There was a time, not too long ago, when he and I were leaving one of his baseball games and a very cute blonde girl came bounding up to us and hugged him. Hugged him! Right in front of me!

I was shocked! Not that a girl would want to hug my son, but that he knew a girl well enough that she would hug him in public – and, more importantly, that I didn’t know her.

How is it possible that just a couple of months ago he was still sharing every detail of his life with me and now…he’s having lunch with a girl who I still want to call Claudio.

When your kids are little you know their entire world. Most of the time their world is your world. Even if you work full-time you know who the kids at the preschool are and who their parents are (usually because of the seemingly endless number of parent cocktail receptions and coffees for preschool and grammar school parents.) When they hit middle school and junior high you still get snippets of information about their friends because they need to talk about their social lives ALL THE TIME: “Jeremy is my best friend;” “You wouldn’t believe what Annie did today. She is so funny;” “John is such a prick;” (just kidding, that language comes later).

Eventually though, they meet some new kid on a sport’s team or at camp or worse, they go to a high school with 4000 students and you can no longer keep track of who they associate with. Next thing you know they are having lunch with Claudio, er, Claudia.

My mother-in-law likes to joke that her middle son didn’t talk to her during his four years of high school. Even though there are times when I would prefer that neither one of my kids talk to me – four years does seem like a long time.

What to do…

Well, let me tell you what not to do.

First, do not ask any questions. Teenagers will not answer questions—not even about the color of the sky. If they do offer you a sliver of information, Do Not Make Eye Contact.  This will cause your teenager to sever all communication – possibly for four years.

I know these rules and yet, I couldn’t help myself.

That evening I was driving my son to his friend’s house and he was chattering away about nothing in particular. This is the perfect time, I reasoned, to throw in a question or two about his new “friend.” He was in a good mood and we were both facing forward (no eye contact, remember?).

Me: “So, who else sits with you at lunch?

Son: “You don’t know any of them.”

What?? There are more changes to his world that I don’t know about?!

Me (trying to contain my curiosity): “But I thought you sat with Tyler and Mark at lunch every day?”

We drew up to a stop sign and I looked straight at him. I just couldn’t help it.

Son: “What’s with all of the questions?” he demanded. “Why do you care?” And, with that, all communication ceased. Damn, I knew not to look him in the eyes.

Fast forward a few hours.

My son seemed to have forgotten about shutting me out after our earlier interrogation exchange and resumed communication with me. As much as I would have liked to pick up our conversation where we left off, I decide not to ask about lunch anymore.

He babbled on about computer games and homework assignments before heading up to bed.

“Oh,” he said as he climbed the stairs to his room. “Can you make sure that I’m up by 9:00? I’m going to breakfast with Mike and Marina tomorrow. Thanks!”

“Marina?” I call after him. Who’s Marina?

No answer.

Maybe he said Marino…

28 Feb

Brotherly Love?

Posted by I suck as a parent in children, family, kids, parenting.

My kids don’t get along…and I don’t care anymore.

This may seem particularly harsh but I am really tired of policing their arguments and discussing all the ways that they will be better people if they can rely on each other when they are older.  Because, really, is that true?

I know plenty of people who don’t get along with their family members and they seem perfectly happy and well adjusted. If I stop telling my kids that they should get along maybe they won’t know any better when they are older and it will seem perfectly normal to dislike each other. They didn’t pick each other, after all; they were forced together.

It wasn’t always this way – until a month ago my youngest adored his older brother—to a fault. Oh, the abuse he took! I would watch in agony as my 15-year-old ignored his little brother, teased his little brother, drove his little brother to tears with his indifference. My youngest would be so sad but he seldom lashed out and he always went back for more.

But now we have obviously turned a corner.

I say this because I can hear my 11-year-old tell his older brother that he does not want to play Call of Duty with him. “I don’t want to play anything with you ever again,” I hear him say. He doesn’t scream it at him, he doesn’t sound agitated. He is eerily composed.

Usually a disagreement between these two is charged with emotion and ends in a whole lot of tears – all from my youngest who just wants his brother’s attention.

This, however, is different…and a little scary.

I’m curious but I don’t jump in until I hear the tail end of the next sentence. “…because you’re being a dick,” he says calmly.

Now I have to intervene because of the language but I’m also dying to know what’s going on. “Now honey,” I say. “Even if that’s true, I don’t want you using that word.”

“Fine,” my 11-year-old responds. “You’re being an ass,” he says with a smirk.

Nice.

Off to his room he goes.

This, of course, leaves the Xbox free for my 15-year-old, which I’m starting to think was part of his plan all along. This “plan” must suddenly have occurred to my youngest because he comes tearing down the stairs with a crazed look about him. He doesn’t look distraught; he looks vicious.

Again, this is different…and a little scary.

I intervene this time because my youngest is supposed to be in his room and, more importantly, I’m pretty sure that he is about to dive across the couch and begin pummeling his brother who is a foot taller than him and weighs 50 pounds more – not a good idea.

Once everyone retreats and the Xbox has been removed, I try to muster up the energy to have a discussion with my 15-year-old. But what am I going to say: “Be nice to your little brother. He will be there for you when you are older, blah, blah, blah.”?  I think about reminding him of the book of poems that his little brother wrote about him for Christmas (just 2 months ago!) but I don’t.

Instead, I say something like this: “If someone doesn’t want you around, you need to respect that person’s wishes and go away. If you don’t get along with your little brother when you leave this house and go off into the world, that’s fine; but you are going to get along with him as long as you both live in this house because I don’t want to deal with angry outbursts and possible bloodshed.”

I don’t tell him to apologize, I don’t try to guilt him into being nice, I just don’t care today.

30 minutes later

I hear laughter.

I head downstairs to see who is over and find both of my boys sitting on the couch watching television. They look at my puzzled expression, give each other a knowing look and resume watching TV and laughing.

Apparently, I have stumbled across the best way to unite my children: give them a common enemy – me.

Governments could learn from me.

1 Feb

What a Chore!

Posted by I suck as a parent in children, family, kids, parenting. Tagged: , , , .

I don’t let my kids do enough.

I’m not talking about giving them more freedom; I’m talking about housework. I’ve gotten into the habit of just doing the work myself to avoid the initial fight when I ask them to do something, followed by the inevitable disappointment I feel when I view the final product.

For instance, last week when we had a fairly heavy snowfall I started getting dressed to head outside to shovel when I remembered that I have two kids! What is the point of having kids if you can’t make them do tedious work around the house?

So I turned to my oldest and said, “Please go outside and shovel. Thank you.”

You would think I asked him to shovel the snow in his bare feet with one hand tied behind his back while simultaneously painting the house—that’s how much he complained.

Just to be clear, shoveling snow at our house does not involve removing snow from a large driveway or even a 600-foot long sidewalk. It’s about 100 feet of walkway—front and back. In the time it took my son to complain about shoveling, he could have been done.

About 15 minutes after my initial request, he finally trudged out the door. Usually it’s those 15 minutes of listening to him bitch about the task that does me in and I take over just to have some peace. But this time I ignored him and kept repeating, “Please go outside and shovel. Thank you.”

Yes, I thought. It worked!

Then I tried to walk to the garage.

Apparently my son and I have very different ideas of what it means to shovel. I believe the snow should be removed from the width of the entire walk (in this case that’s four feet); he believes the width of the shovel is enough of a path. So now I’m slogging along the walk, dragging grocery bags across the snow because I only have about 16 inches of clearance.

What do I do now? Do I make him go outside and do it the “right way” or do I let him do it his way and just be happy that he did something?

Part of me is convinced that he does a crap job so I will eventually stop asking him to do anything. It’s the same theory I have about my husband washing dishes – there is so much water on the counters and the floor when he attempts to “help” with the dishes that I inevitably step in before he can even start. He denies the plot but I’m not convinced.

Is my son also plotting against me or is he just being a teenager?

I couldn’t help myself; I had to ask him what he thought about the shoveling job. I explained my predicament with the groceries. He told me that I should have lifted the bags higher.

I just stared at him.

He then suggested that I get a wider shovel. Followed by my favorite line: “It’s supposed to warm up tomorrow anyway. It will probably melt.”

While I had to applaud his creativity, it still didn’t solve my dilemma. Why can’t he see that he didn’t do a good job shoveling the walk?

I was mulling over this question when I remembered a Wall Street Journal article that I read recently entitled, “What’s Wrong with the Teenage Mind.”* The author, Alison Gopnik, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, believes that teenagers today don’t learn practical life skills the way their predecessors did and it’s having a negative impact on them. In the past, children would be expected to help around the house (or the farm) and they would have jobs like a paper route or baby-sitting long before they were 16, she explained.

“[Today’s] adolescents,” the author notes “often don’t do much of anything except go to school.”

Getting a better education may have led to higher IQ (and in my son’s case, a more creative approach to problem-solving), but the lack of basic skill development is, she believes, at the root of why teenagers have delayed development of the pre-frontal cortex of the brain—the part that governs impulse control, motivation and decision-making. If kids don’t flex those muscles (or that part of their brain) early and often she believes, they can’t develop into the responsible and productive adults they are meant to become.

As I stood at the back door with my groceries, I reasoned that he isn’t doing a “bad” job just to piss me off; he simply hasn’t been doing enough work around the house to learn how to do it well!

Apparently, it is my job to make my kids do as much work around the house as possible!

Armed with this knowledge, I decided to simply say thank you for the shoveling…and then I made him carry in the rest of the groceries. Not because I wanted him to have to drag the groceries through the snow, of course. I’m just helping with that pre-frontal cortex thing.

 

*For Alison Gopnik’s article see: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203806504577181351486558984.html.

 

 

7 Dec

“Yes, honey, there is a Santa Claus” and Other Lies We Tell Our Children

Posted by I suck as a parent in children, family, kids, parenting, Tooth fairy.

This lying thing is a slippery slope. You start by innocently teaching your kids about the Tooth Fairy or Santa Clause or the Easter Bunny—envisioning their little faces lighting up with anticipation and delight at the magic—and the next thing you know you’re shelling out $10 a tooth or crafting letters from one of Santa’s elves and wishing you could just stop the madness.

Take the Tooth Fairy, a rather innocuous fabrication used to ease the fear and anxiety of losing a tooth. The first couple of times it is so great to see your kids’ toothless grins when they run out of their rooms in the morning clutching a few dollars. But after a while it becomes a bit of a drag, so, if you are like me, you try to take a shortcut.

Last year I decided that I would simply swap out the tooth for the money at the same time that I tucked my youngest into bed. This way, I thought, I would lessen the chance that I would forget to leave the cash.

What I did forgot, though, was that my kid might grab for the tooth just to make sure it was still there as he drifted off to sleep.

Which, of course, was exactly what he did.

So when he whipped open his bedroom door seconds later, he found me skulking away with an envelope containing his tooth. Many tears and accusations later the truth was out: I was the tooth fairy.

But now, tis the season for Santa and my 11-year-old has me in a state of confusion. How do I respond when he asks: “Mom, is there really a Santa Claus?” Does no tooth fairy=no Santa? And more importantly, does he really believe or is he milking me for more presents?

Our oldest was 7 when I ruined Santa for him. “Santa’s not real, right Mom?” he would ask. I ignored his questions as much as I could but then one day I thought that maybe my scientific-minded child really wanted to know the truth. And, besides, I shouldn’t be lying to my kid, right?

And so I told him: “No, honey there is no Santa Claus.”

So much for my scientific minded child wanting to know the truth. His little face fell and tears ran down his cheeks.  I had taken away something magical. Not to mention the fact that I had been lying to him for 7 years.

“So, is the Easter Bunny fake, too?” he asked next, in between sobs.

Now what was I supposed to do? Well, the fat guy was out of the bag, I thought, the bunny may as well be, too.

Poor kid.

Shortly after that the tooth fairy went the same way as her make-believe counterparts (although we did continue to give him a few bucks per tooth out of guilt).

Now, when faced with the prospect of outing Santa again, I refuse to be the bad guy.  I have smoothly dodged many Santa Claus traps over the past few years and maintained the fantasy: multiple department store Santas? (“They’re Santa’s helpers!”); collateral holiday characters (of course Rudolph is real!); But now, there’s “The Elf on the Shelf”. Would this 10” ridiculous looking elf be my undoing?

For the uninitiated there is a fairly new Christmas “tradition” known as “The Elf on the Shelf,” a small elf doll that, as the story goes, magically appears in your house on December 1st to keep an eye on the kids for Santa. Every night the elf is supposed to check in at the North Pole and then reappear the following morning in a different location in your house. This goes on until December 24th when the elf returns to his home to give Santa the final update.

After 3 years I thought I was done. I had dutifully dragged out the Elf on December 1 and moved him around every night since my youngest was 7 (Ok, so I forgot a few times but I tap danced around the gaffe pretty well: “Maybe it was his night off?!” and “Maybe this is the best vantage point?!”).

I decided to test the waters this year and not break him out on time. A few days went by without a peep, until yesterday when my son told me to bring out the Elf.

“What?” I scoffed. “Me, bring out the Elf? The Elf just shows up,” I reminded him, watching closely for signs that he was fishing for information. But there was nothing.

So, I dug out the Elf and here he sits, smiling smugly as he perches on his shelf. And here I am, just keeping up the charade. I already ruined too many childhood fantasies—I hope I’ve learned my lesson.

 

23 Sep

Playing Favorites

Posted by I suck as a parent in parenting. Tagged: , , , .

I want my 11-year-old to like me more than he likes my husband. I used to be his favorite. I was the only one who he would sit next to at meals, the only one he would cuddle up with on the couch, the only one who could tuck him in at night. But now things are changing.

I didn’t really notice the shift until a couple of days after my birthday. My birthday came and went with the usual fanfare. Typical gifts were received: books, kitchen tools, store-bought cards that my kids had never laid eyes on before they were asked to sign them. I was happy with my swag until…I walked into my husband’s office and noticed the adorable handmade Father’s day card propped up on his desk. I had forgotten about it. It wasn’t particularly fancy. On the contrary, it was just a 2”x3” folded piece of computer paper with a stick drawing on the front. But it was the sentiment that mattered. It read:

Happy Father’s Day.  You’re the Best Dad Ever!!!!! Thanks for everything you do for me!!! I love you!!!

What?!! What does my husband do for him, I wondered. He doesn’t put him to bed or cook him dinner or drive him everywhere or deal with his friends or teachers or homework—where was my thank you card?

Petty jealousy flared in me. I flashed back to the card that I had just received, days before, for my birthday. It was a drawing of a coffee cup that my 11-year-old had drawn, years before, which he unearthed from a stack of art supplies and other crumpled papers. He didn’t draw that for me, I thought. There was nothing new, or heartfelt or personal about it. It was signed: “Happy Birthday! Love, Me.” That’s it.

Where were my gushing sentiments?

But that’s not the least of it. For Father’s Day my 11-year-old also took $100.00 of his savings and bought my husband a Starbuck’s gift card and—yes, there’s more—went to the local bookstore and had a staff member help him select a book: The Little Red Book of Dad’s Wisdom. He did all of this without consulting me and without any of my help. And, he did all of this days in advance.

My recycled drawing was folded and signed the morning of my birthday, in my presence. I had dutifully turned away when I saw him scribbling his name that morning (so I wouldn’t ruin the surprise, of course).  I smiled at the time, thinking, “that’s so sweet, a homemade card”. Ha! I want something bigger and more special.

I was actually taken aback by my crazed response to the Father’s Day card. Wasn’t I the one who had tried to encourage my 11-year-old to be more affectionate with his father? I would see the wounded look on my husband’s face when our youngest would burst into tears at the prospect of being put to bed by his father if I was out for the night.

But secretly I reveled in it. He was mine – all mine. There is nothing like the total adoration of your child to make you weak in the knees. When your kids are little and they look at you like you are the only thing on the planet that matters – well, there is nothing like that feeling.

And I want it back.

My husband tried to tell me this shift was because our son just loves me so much that he has a hard time expressing his feelings, but I don’t buy it. I think that my youngest has figured out how to work the system. He knows who is going to turn a blind eye when he rolls a eight pound medicine ball down the stairs and dents the wall or when the dinner dishes don’t quite make it anywhere near the sink let alone the dishwasher.  He knows that his antics will be met with a laugh and a shake of the head from my husband but a lecture and potential grounding from me.

Who would you favor?

So, in order to receive the attention and affection that I so rightly deserve, I decided on a new tactic. At dinner, I casually mentioned that my husband would not be at our son’s soccer game this weekend…again! While my husband tried to change the subject  (and our son glared at him) I also reminded our son that my husband missed his Back to School night last week and would miss his half-birthday cake this week (yes, we have half a cake on half birthdays). Ha! Who’s the favorite now?!

Petty? Sure, but it worked. I’ll let you know how it goes…

18 Aug

Give it 20 Minutes

Posted by I suck as a parent in parenting. Tagged: , , , , , , .

Give it 20 Minutes

I have just returned from a two-week vacation and I feel like a new person. So much so, that I can’t think of a single inferior mother moment – or maybe it’s the jet lag since I can’t remember much about anything or maybe, just maybe, I’m becoming a better parent.

To be safe I asked my kids what they thought was a recent bad mom moment. My 11-year-old was quick to list all of my past mistakes but I told him that those didn’t count. When I made him narrow it down to the last few weeks he had nothing. Nothing!

I thought that my oldest would have at least a handful of incidences but he too was a stumped…

For a beat.

“Well, it’s not really a fair question,” he said. “We’ve been on vacation with Grandma and Yiayia (Grandmother in Greek) and you’re never really mean in front of them.” He paused. “Give it 20 minutes,” he added. And both of my boys laughed.

Now, normally that kind of sass would make me mad – just because. But not today. No, today I laughed too. It must be the new not Inferior me.

As I went about making dinner I politely asked my 15-year-old to please start his summer reading (“It’s only 300 pages, Mom, and I have 6 days!”)

From behind me I heard my youngest mutter, “I give it 10 minutes.”

Yes, normally, I would be demanding that he start reading THIS INSTANT and if he didn’t start right away I would begin listing all of the things that I would eventually take away from him (but never do) and he would dig in his heels and refuse and I would stomp off angry and he would read but get nothing out of it.

Not today! Today, he read 30 pages, which he annotated, and he even brought up the motif that is emerging in the book. I could be on to something – not yelling seems to work!

About 10 minutes later my husband walked up behind me as I was sending an email and started to comment on what I was writing. For the record – I hate, hate, hate that. I hate having someone looking over my shoulder while I’m writing, reading, breathing. Clearly it’s a holdover from my childhood and I should probably see someone about it, but today after my initial, “Do you mind?” And, “You know how much I hate that,” as I felt myself gearing up to spew the laundry list of times that I have asked him not to do that I stopped.  I just didn’t have it in me. I simply turned away.

In the midst of this I hear my oldest son in the other room say to his little brother: “Here it comes.”

So now they’re gunning for me. They are convinced, even with all evidence to the contrary, that I am not a new person. In case you are wondering, I wasn’t at an ashram, I wasn’t hanging with the Dalai Lama or cultivating inner peace, I was just on a long overseas vacation with my family, my mother-in-law and my mom (just writing that sentence is making me wonder why I’m not more crazed but something about it worked).

Hours pass and still no eruption, but now it’s bedtime—a true test of my strength. Bedtime has been a little unpredictable as of late. Between summer activities, summer camp and vacation there has been very little structure in our home but with school right around the corner I think that sleep before 11:00 pm is in order.

And so the whining begins. First my youngest starts with the “I’m not tired” excuse, then it’s the “I haven’t had my dessert yet,” line, followed by the always popular “Actually, I don’t want dessert I’m just really hungry.” And on it goes for a good five minutes.

“GET TO BED!” I finally scream. “NOW!” And that was followed by a long, drawn out mommy rant about he never listens and if he doesn’t get to sleep then I can’t get to sleep, and school is coming and his sleep has been so disrupted and on and on and on.

When I finally come up for air and look up at my family they’re smiling. “I told you I could make her crack,” my youngest proclaims as he bounds up the stairs. I almost expect them to exchange money – as if the three of them were taking bets about how long it would take for me to lose it.

But I showed them. “Give it 20 minutes?” Ha! It took hours.

Originally printed on acontrolledsubstance.com.

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