Archive for the ‘raising kids’ Category

26 Feb

What I Have Learned After Nearly 19 Years of Parenting

Posted by I suck as a parent in boys, children, family, humor, kids, motherhood, parenting, raising kids, Uncategorized, writing. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Usually, after 19 years on a job, you begin to feel pretty competent. You move through your daily routine with some sense of mastery, some confidence in your abilities. Even if there is a little hiccup in your daily schedule you know, from years of experience, that you can figure it out.

And then there is parenting.

No matter how many years you are a parent you never really know what you are doing. How can you if the job description changes every day – ok, every minute – and the other people you work with don’t follow the rules??

I didn’t realize how little I’ve learned over nearly two decades until I was surrounded by new-ish parents who thought that I had a handle on this parenting gig.

Ha!

To their credit no one asked me any specific questions but they did sigh longingly when they said that it must be easier now that my kids can take care of themselves and I can sleep through the night.

Again, ha!

I didn’t burst that bubble, though (FYI: teenagers do not take care of themselves and what parent of a teenager actually gets sleep??). I figured that these young mothers didn’t need to worry about the teen years while they are chasing their toddlers around Starbucks and tending to screaming infants.

It did make me realize, however, that there are a few things I’ve picked up along the way. I wrote them down as proof that at this moment* I think I’ve learned something.

  1. Your kids are listening even when you think they aren’t. I’m not talking about eavesdropping (although they tend to do that as well so you have to be careful when you are talking on the phone). No, I’m talking about those times when you are doling out unsolicited advice about dating or drinking or you are nagging them to do work instead of playing video games. One day they will see the value in your advice and they may even thank you. Maybe. But don’t hold your breath for their thanks.
  2. It’s ok to apologize. You will make mistakes…all the time. It’s healthy for your kids to see that you are not perfect and that you are human. This doesn’t mean that you should keep making the same mistake every day and keep apologizing for it, but, if you make a bad call, yell when you are having a bad day or give crappy advice – apologize and talk about it.
  3. Yelling doesn’t help.
  4. Humor is so important. My boys and I have so many silly inside jokes that make us crack up all the time. I love those moments and I love that connection. My boys may shake their heads when I make up a song about the dog or when I think I’m being “punny” but I see them smile occasionally. I hope those moments outweigh all of the times I nagged them about their homework.
  5. They will dislike you at times especially when you enforce a rule that pisses them off – like taking away a phone when they forgot to call home or not letting them go out when they break curfew. They will get over it. As long as my responses to their infractions are reasonable I can walk away and know that I’ve done my job. Every now and then I say things like, I am taking away all of your electronics for three months because you were 5 minutes late! That’s when an apology and, sometimes, a sense of humor come in handy.
  6. Family time is sacred. Whether it’s dinner or breakfast or a family movie night, shared family experiences are glue.
  7. Take lots of pictures, write things down, make a video. Not of every moment because some moments are definitely worth simply sinking into, but, know this: you will not remember everything. No matter how many times you think, I will never forget this moment, you will. And, the pictures, notes, videos are as much for your kids as they are for you.
  8. Let them fail – often. You’ve probably heard this a lot by now but failing is not the new “f” word. I am so guilty of trying to save my kids. Trying to protect them from every contingency, every physical scrape, every emotional let down. I dole out advice, say no to seemingly dangerous activities and guess what? Even as I’m running interference for them, they’ve suffered injuries and set backs – and that’s ok.
  9. They need you as much when they are 19 as they do when they are 2.
  10. They love you even when you suck as a parent.

 

*This is subject to change at any moment.

 

How about you? What have you learned from #parenting?

 

Like this piece? Then share it!

28 Jan

The First Child Experiment

Posted by I suck as a parent in birth order, boys, children, college, family, humor, kids, motherhood, parenting, raising kids, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Our poor first-born children.

We parents have no idea how little we know about parenting our oldest child until our subsequent children go through a similar experience. Only then can we look back and say to ourselves, damn, I screwed that up!

First-time parents move through parenthood blindly, figuring things out on the fly because no matter how much experience you may have had with someone else’s kids in the past, you still have no idea what you are doing with your child. You are positive that everything that you do to your child or for your child will have lasting repercussions. Because, let’s face it, that whole nature vs. nurture thing simply means that if your DNA doesn’t screw them up your parenting skills will.

A friend of mine recently joked that she hopes that her oldest daughter recognizes that she is a parenting experiment.

I think her analogy is spot on.

With no roadmap and no instruction manual, most first time parents approach everything they do to their first child like a science experiment even if they don’t realize they are doing it.

Let’s use potty training as an example.

Step 1: Ask a Question

The first step when conducting any scientific experiment is to ask a question. In this case a good question would be: “Will my two-year-old child ever be potty trained or will he be in diapers in college?”

Step 2: Do Background Research

Pour over every parenting book, website and magazine to figure out if it is indeed possible to have a child who refuses to be potty trained and ends up wearing diapers in college.

Step 3: Construct a Hypothesis

In this example your hypothesis could be: “If I buy my child super hero underwear, he will be so excited he will then want to use the potty and never use diapers again.”

Steps 4 and Beyond: Test Your Hypothesis

You test your hypothesis, which, of course, fails miserably because as first time parents you don’t yet know that toddlers are stubborn and refuse to do anything that you want them to do, so, you continue to reformulate and retest your hypotheses until you make your child cry which, in turn, makes you cry and so on and so on and so on until eventually you figure it out.

And then your next kid comes along and it’s SO MUCH EASIER!

Why?

It’s not because the second child is less difficult; it’s because you are.

With your second child you know that any fear you have that your child will go to college in diapers is absurd! And, although you may need to tweak your approach with each kid to get the same result (each kid is different after all), without the anxiety of the unknown hanging over you, the process is so much easier.

You would think that once we recognize this pattern we would find a way to speed up the learning curve…but we can’t. Every stage of our first-born child’s life presents some new scenario that we are ill prepared to handle: school, friendships, driving, dating, college, etc.

Everything our first child does is, well, first, which makes everything they do novel, scary, and very, very important.

I was reminded of this again over the weekend when I attended a cocktail party for the parents’ of my younger son’s high school freshmen class. I spoke with several parents who had just survived their oldest child’s first set of high school finals. Every one of these parents had some version of the same story: they had to force their kid to study because their kid wouldn’t get organized or study long enough or care enough: the parent’s anger would grow until eventually the parent exploded; and every one of these parents believed that their child’s failure to comprehend the importance of final exams and their general lack of motivation meant that they would never graduate from high school, attend college, get a job and move out of the house.

“Shit,” I thought. “That’s how I sounded four years ago!”

“If you don’t study, you will fail and you will end up living in my basement!” was my mantra during my older son’s finals.

This time around with my youngest who just completed his first set of finals I took a laissez-faire approach: I did not yell when his focus drifted from his studying, I did not yell when I saw his grades, and I did not yell when he said, “I should have studied more.”

My mantra this time around, as it has been with everything for my second child, was “This too shall pass.”

Because it does…

…unless, of course, it’s your older child facing some new experience, in which case see Steps 1-4 above.

22 May

A Different Angle

Posted by I suck as a parent in Adulthood, children, college, family, humor, kids, letting go, motherhood, parenting, parents, raising kids, school, Uncategorized, writing. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , .

As I dropped my youngest son off this morning for the last day of his sophomore year in high school I was reminded of the day, two years ago, when I dropped off my oldest son at his high school for the last time before his graduation. Ugh! That was an ugly cry day for me. But, as is often the case in parenting, I survived and moved on to the next tearful/joyous/stressful moment.

So, for all you parents filling my Facebook feed with posts about the difficulty of suffering through a child’s last days of high school or college I thought I would re-share this post, originally published on May 22, 2014, to remind you that these days are not ends but beginnings – it just depends on your perspective.

Today was the last full day of high school for my oldest son. Yesterday was the last Wednesday and tomorrow will be the last time he sets foot in the school as a student.

I’ve been doing this morbid mental list of last moments for months now. Yesterday I even took a photo:

 

photo

The Last Wednesday I will ever pick him up from school!

 

The hardest moment, up until this week, was: this is the last birthday we will celebrate with him at home.

I’ve tried not to think about that one for too long.

I can’t stop myself. It’s such an automatic reaction that, this morning, I found myself thinking: this is the last time he will carry his lunch to high school in this black lunch bag—ever!

It’s an illness.

Obviously, I know that he will return home at some point (to visit, hopefully, not to live) but I know it won’t be the same.

As much as I complain about having to wait up for him on the weekends at least I know where he is at night. I also like sitting around the dinner table almost every night even if the meal takes 45 minutes to prepare and only 10 minutes to consume—at least I know that we have those 10 minutes!

Yes, he will eat meals with us again and I’m sure I will still want to wait up for him when he is back from college (although I guarantee I won’t make it past the first weekend) but today marked the last day that I will drive him to and from school. Those few minutes in the car every morning and every afternoon felt like stolen moments for me. Facing forward in our seats with no pressure to “have a conversation” my son would chatter away about his classes or who did what during the day at school, but once we walked into our house all conversation would stop.

I know that I will never have an opportunity like that again, at least not every day.

And, yet, this is as it should be. I wouldn’t want it any other way.

My son, through his own sadness today, pointed out that the end of high school is just the beginning of his independent life as a college student, a time filled with many firsts for him (many I’m sure that I don’t want to know about). “It’s all about perspective, mom,” he told me.

I’ll give him perspective.

For instance, today’s last lunch in his black lunch bag means that tomorrow will be the first time in nine years that I won’t have to make two lunches every day!

The last time he lives at home will be the first time I won’t have to do his laundry or yell at him to do his own laundry (at least for a few months but, that’s something).

And the last time he eats dinner with us before he leaves for college with be the first time that I don’t have to be annoyed that he has his ear phones on and can’t hear me so I have to text him in the other room to let him know that dinner is ready and I need the table set!

Perspective is a funny thing.

And it works the other way, too. I started thinking about my kids “first” moments—first steps, first words, first day of school. Those moments were also lasts if I shift my point of view. For instance, my first son’s first steps marked the last time I would be able to sit down for any length of time until my kids went to school. Had I known what his walking and eventual running, followed closely by climbing and jumping actually meant for me I may not have been so enthusiastic about taking photos of him walking – I may have taken photos of me lounging on the couch or sitting at the table enjoying a leisurely meal.

It is all about perspective.

More notable, yet unrecorded last moments masquerading as firsts:

My son’s first words = the last time I would able to have an adult conversation without being interrupted by a child’s questions.

His first “big boy” bed = the last time I would sleep in my bed (for eight years!) without a child climbing in at 5:30 am.

His first pair of big boy underwear = the last time I changed his diaper. Now that moment really should have been captured in a photo.

I guess my son was right, although he probably didn’t realize that he was doling out parenting advice. Parenting really is about your point of view. If you try to see things from a different angle it may not be as bad as it seems.

 

Newer Entries »