i suck as a parent navigating motherhood one day at a time

Parents everywhere are preparing for the imminent departure of their soon-to-be college kids. Some parents are shedding tears of sorrow and some (if not most) are crying tears of joy as the unending power struggle between parent and child comes to a close – at least until fall break.

When my oldest was a high school senior I remember thinking that he could not leave soon enough. Every day was a battle and every fight was punctuated by the words, “I can’t wait to get out of this place!” I don’t know what my son was saying because I was yelling those words so loudly that the neighbors started to ask where I was going and when I was leaving.

But seriously, my son could not wait to leave and every day –sometimes every hour – I had to remind him that although he would be going to college soon and I wouldn’t know where he was or what he was doing while he was living at home we still had rules, which included being civil to everyone around him.

College couldn’t come soon enough.

Senior year in high school and the summer right before college is a time when kids really start to separate from their parents. They are testing out their independence to ready themselves for the moment when mom and dad will no longer be there to guide them – except via text at all hours of the day and night.

This separation is known in parenting circles as “soiling the nest,” (not literally, in case you are worried). As kids try to come to terms with the idea of leaving the comforts of home and deal with their uneasiness about entering “adulthood” they develop a swagger, an I-don’t-need-my-parents façade to mask their nervousness with the transition. Instead of wallowing in their anxiety and sorrow they tend to separate messily and make everyone involved want to shove them out of the tree (not literally, in case you are worried).

I worry about this phenomenon as my youngest son starts his senior year of high school. Even though I know what may (I’m optimistic) be coming, I will still be shocked and saddened when my usually polite, sweet child tries to push the limits of our house rules and the limits of my patience. I really don’t want to spend this year fighting with him, resenting him and wishing him away.

And, yet, that seems to be the norm come the end of August.

So how do you make the most out of the little time you have left before your kid goes to college? (And don’t say, avoid him at all costs). 

Even if the last thing you want to do is spend another second with your kid, believe me, when you are ugly crying at drop off you will wish you did.

Here are some ideas from seasoned moms about how to spend those final weeks, days and hours with your kid before they start college:

1. Invite another friend and his/her mom for a lunch, a mani/pedi, a baseball game, a movie – whatever your kid is into. Tell your kid it was the other mom’s idea if that will get him to go.
2. Enforce a mandatory dinner – at least one. Include your kid’s friends if that makes it easier. Whatever it takes.
3. Sneak in a family game night, even if “family” includes friends. Board games not your family’s thing? Play tennis, go to a movie, go golfing, go for a bike ride, just do something with the family. Feel free to riff on this line: “Your little/older sister/brother is going to miss you a lot so maybe we can all go to a movie/dinner/football game so you can spend time with her.”
4. Use the family pet as a bargaining chip and “suggest” your son or daughter join you for a few walks around the block with the dog/cat/pet rat to ease the pet’s transition.
5. Go shopping. Bribery works.
6. If your child surprises you by sidling up to you and chatting pleasantly, don’t do a double take and say something like, “Now there’s the sweet boy I know. Where have you been?” which can only lead to your baby bird reverting to his vulture self. Instead, as my friend, Kim, said, “Pull up a chair and enjoy the moment because it’s probably all you are going to get.”
7. And, if you are down to the wire and it’s move-in day eve, splurge on a movie and room service if you are in a hotel. My older son and I did this before his freshman year and it became a tradition of ours. It was 2+ hours of uninterrupted time together. When I take him back this year – the last year of his college move-in days – we plan to do the same thing. Sure, room service and an in-room movie are ridiculously expensive but those 2 hours are worth every penny to me.

Any other thoughts for spending time with your college-bound kid?

I love a good scavenger hunt, which is why, when I was searching for a way to teach my family where we store essentials items in the house I thought about creating a treasure hunt to help them learn.

I know what you are thinking, what a fun way for young kids to get to know where things are! Yes, it would have been fun for my young kids only this treasure hunt is for my 17-year-old, my 21-year-old and my husband.

Apparently, I forgot to train them at an early age.

I think it really shouldn’t be that hard to remember where the extra jarred tomato sauce is, where we keep the extra sheets for overnight guests, or where the cupcake pan is because they have all been in the same place for the 20+ years we have lived in the this house.

And, in case you think my system of organization is at fault, I believe that I have organized our home in a way that makes sense. For instance, the dishes and glassware are in the kitchen and close to the dishwasher; extra towels, toothpaste, toothbrushes, soap, etc. are in all of the bathrooms; and cooking utensils are organized by use, i.e. measuring cups and other baking needs are in one area, small appliances are grouped together and grilling accessories are in a separate area.

Sounds logical, right? (and, yes, maybe a bit uptight – I’ll own that)

And yet…

Not a day goes by without a “where is the…?” question. Does my family think that once a week I rearrange the shelves and closets just to mess with them? Although messing with them is something I might consider doing, I assure you that I have not done that (who has time for that!?).

I realize that no one in my house really needs to remember where anything is kept – why would they when I am always available to tell them. It’s like being in the passenger seat when my husband is driving. He doesn’t pay attention to where we are going because he knows I will tell him.

But, what if I’m in a coma? How will they find the toothpaste? Or the peanut butter?? I truly believe that dying is the only thing that would stop my kids from asking me where something is in the house.

Really.

Because even if I’m not home, it is apparently easier to text me and ask where something is then to look for it. And, yes, I realize I don’t have to answer them but they are very persistent and I am clearly an enabler.

Since I don’t think I’m going anywhere soon (knock on wood), I had to come up with another way to train my boys. I remembered the time when my kids were little and the only way to get them to do anything was to turn it into a game. If they needed to get dressed I would say, “Go get dressed, I’ll time you!” and they would race off to see how fast they could get dressed. If I needed them to clean the playroom it was a race, and if I needed them to go get me something it was timed. So in that vein, I’m creating The Amazing Race: Family Edition.

Except without the million-dollar prize and the weird foods.

Whatever, it will still be fun!

I started compiling a list of questions to guide my family to certain often used items.

One of my favorite questions that I’ve come up with so far is, “Where is the water?”

(I assume no one knows where the water is because they always say out loud, “The dog needs water.” But no one fills up the water bowl. It must be because they don’t know where they water is!)

I’m envisioning a sort of scavenger hunt/multiple choice game with prizes hidden in certain locations if they actually go find the needed item.

For instance, one of the multiple choice questions is:

You want to spit out your gum but the garbage can in the kitchen doesn’t have a garbage bag in it. You:

a) spit your gum in the toilet and flush;

b) wrap up your gum in a napkin and leave it on the counter or;

c) find a garbage bag. Extra points if you know where the extra bags are kept!

I can’t give away too many of the questions now because they haven’t played the game yet. I’ll let you know who wins. My boys are nothing if not competitive so this may actually work.

Stay tuned.

How about your house?

Do your kids know where the flour is? How about the extra sheets? The extra dog food?

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I just got off the phone with a friend of mine whose daughter, a senior in college, broke up with her on-again-off-again boyfriend. According to my friend, the couple could never quite get on the same page at the same time even after four years. This time her daughter wanted the relationship to progress but her boyfriend’s heart wasn’t in it.

“She’s devastated,” my friend told me. “Part of me wants to make her comfort food and the other part of me wants to tell her to get over it because we all know he’s not ‘the one’ anyway. What do I do?” she asked.

I’m no expert on counseling anyone with a broken heart. Even with the hundreds of hours spent as a teenager dissecting every little detail of my friends’ and my relationships, none of us really knew how to help anyone through the painful stages of a breakup. But – my friend wanted my opinion and who am I not to over-analyze a relationship with a friend – old habits die hard, I guess.

So here are some dos and don’ts for helping a kid through a breakup.

1. Don’t bash the ex.

My friend’s first impulse was to remind her daughter about all of the bad things the boyfriend did. Really rip into him to remind her why the relationship hasn’t worked and why it wouldn’t work. I suggested she not do that because chances are it will bite her in the ass.

I know of what I speak.

When I was in law school, a good friend of mine was dating a girl who flirted with Every Single Guy She Met – often in front of my friend. It made my blood boil. I was so excited when they broke up that I forgot about the cardinal rule of friends and exes: Do Not Speak Badly About Your Friend’s Ex Because She Might Not Stay an Ex For Long. So I happily told him how bad she was for him and how she flirted with everyone and how he was better off without her.

Then they got back together.

Then they got married.

Needless to say we weren’t close after that and I was not invited to the wedding. But I learned my lesson. Even when they got divorced I didn’t say a word about her because you never know…

Granted it’s not quite the same when it’s your kid. You want to protect you kids and seeing them in pain can bring out the claws on the momma bear but can you imagine bad-mouthing the boyfriend and in six months having to welcome him into the family when he proposes? That’s not the position you want to be in as a parent.

2. Don’t push your agenda directly –be subtle with your advice.

I’m not one for holding back but when my older son and his ex-girlfriend did that on-again-off-again stuff I really tried not interfere. I knew from experience and from watching friends go through this that a clean break was a much better plan but I refrained from screaming, “Let it die already! You will never know if you guys like anyone else if you keep getting back together!” Instead I told him in a very nice, very optimistic way, “Maybe if you guys stay apart for a while you can see if you really like each other and then you guys might get back together again after many, many years.”

See. Nice and optimistic.

Then when he tried the, oh, we are just friends bulls**t, I casually asked, “But isn’t it hard to meet anyone else if you guys are together all of the time?”

Subtle, right?

What I wanted to say (actually yell) was that they should delete each other’s contact information, they should date many, many other people, and they should stop pretending that they can just be friends.

But I didn’t.

3. Do recognize that it is not your problem to fix.

First, it wasn’t my problem to solve. All the advice I could give him was based on my experiences – my own and my friends’ – and none of it was really relevant (or welcome as he pointed out when I started to speak). He needed to work through this on his own.

Second – and this is also based on experience – no one really listens to anyone’s advice when it comes to relationships. It’s really hard to see the logic in something so emotional – at least at first. I couldn’t talk my son out of caring about this girl anymore than my friends could have talked me out of caring about the people I cared about.

4. Do lend an ear and a shoulder if requested. Just be there.

Give your kid space and lots of ice cream. Maybe throw in some shopping. Then hunker down with a few movies- preferably one where the girl (or guy) realizes she is better off without whoever she is pining for (Legally Blonde, Sliding Doors, and Forgetting Sarah Marshall come to mind). Just because you can’t give advice directly doesn’t mean that you can’t subliminally make your point…

Any advice you would give?

They say necessity is the mother of invention but I say it’s the mother of independence.

I’m convinced that if I had continued to work full time when my kids were little that now, at 17 and 21, my boys would, out of necessity, know to fill the soap dispenser with soap and not just add water. They would know how to heat up a can of soup, how to feed themselves something other than goldfish and cereal bars while they waited for someone else to prepare “real” food, and they would know how to shop for groceries.

Last week, in an effort to prepare my boys to enter the world without me I sent my oldest son to the store to buy groceries for dinner and he came back with among other requested things, a four pound, $9.00 organic onion.

A four pound onion!

In his defense, I didn’t specify the size of the onion I wanted; I just sort of assumed that after all these years of watching me shop and prep meals he may have noticed that mutant produce was not the norm.

But you know what they say about people who assume…

Yes, it is a little late for my 21-year-old to just be learning how to shop for groceries, but up to this point he has either lived in a dorm or a fraternity house where food is prepared for him or he has lived at home where I don’t like to send anyone out to buy groceries because, well, a four-pound, $9.00, organic onion. But now, my son is moving into an apartment and he will have to prepare some meals (or find someone to cook for him or get three jobs to pay for take out).

I could take him shopping and attempt to pass on my wisdom but I tried that with teaching him how to do laundry. No matter how many times I went over the steps to do laundry before he left for college he conveniently forgot how the whole system worked. Then, miraculously, when he was away at school and out of clothes he managed to figure it out with only minor damage to a couple of white socks.

See, necessity.

By the same logic, if I take him grocery shopping he will expect me to guide him – and by guide him I mean tell him exactly what to do but nothing will stick. If, for instance, I tell him to check for blemishes on the apples that we are buying he will look straight at me as if he’s listening and then pick up the first apple he sees and drop it in the bag. Only when he is shopping for himself and he has spent his own money will he really care that the banged up apple he just bought is riddled with brown spots and virtually inedible.

I don’t blame him. I didn’t start cooking until I lived on my own. Cooking was never a required chore at home – we owned a restaurant so someone was always cooking for us. Once I moved out I lived on salad bar salads from the local grocery store until I realized how expensive that was. Out of necessity I started “cooking” where I mastered the almost daily meal of scrambled eggs, a microwaved baked potato, and green beans straight out of a can. I’m shocked I didn’t develop scurvy from my limited diet but, hey, it was sustenance.

Eventually, mostly out of boredom, I expanded my meals to include things like baked chicken and pasta with jarred tomato sauce (doctored, of course, with a splash of wine and some dried oregano because I’m fancy). Once I had kids, cooking became even more important because kids need food multiple times a day.

Now, I know plenty of people who never cook; they buy their meals prepared from the grocery store, they order in, they eat cereal. But I really believe that cooking is a necessity for kids who, like my son, do not have unlimited funds. He also eats about six meals a day, so you can see the problem.

So, this summer, as I wait for the shove of necessity to kick in, I will keep sending my sons to the store (probably with much more specific instructions – maybe even pictures!) and I will continue to prattle on about food prep with the hope that something sticks (Wash your hands! Never leave anything on the stove if you leave the room! Always salt tomatoes!)

I will also challenge both of my boys to master the following really, really, simple recipe. If all else fails I will challenge them to find the areas in the grocery store with canned green beans and potatoes. Scurvy be damned.

Pasta with Bacon and tomatoes (or Spaghetti all’ Amatriciana if you want to impress someone)

Ingredients:

3 Tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
12 ounces good bacon sliced into little pieces or cut up with a clean kitchen scissors (not the scissors you would use to cut open a package – the one I gave you for the kitchen)
1 small red onion (small!), outside skin removed first, then cut into thin-ish slices and then cut again, in half, to make ½ moon shapes

3 cloves (not heads, just cloves) garlic, (remove papery skin first), then slice
3 to 4 shakes (or 1 1/2 teaspoons hot red pepper flakes)
2 cups jarred tomato sauce (preferably Rao’s Marinara or whatever is on sale)
1 pound spaghetti
Freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Directions:

1. Fill a big pot with water, add 1 tablespoon salt and bring to a boil over medium heat.
2. While the water is boiling , combine the olive oil, chopped bacon, sliced onion, sliced garlic, and red pepper flakes in 12-inch saute pan (not the pan for eggs; the bigger one).
3. Place the pan over low heat and cook until the onion is soft and the bacon has cooked off most of its fat but it’s not too crispy. This should take about 10 minutes, be patient.
4. Drain all but 3 or 4 Tablespoons of the fat out of the pan (use a large spoon to spoon it out but don’t pour the fat down the sink! Put it in a bowl and wait until it cools then dispose of it in the garbage).
5. Add the tomato sauce to the sauté pan, turn the heat up and bring the mixture to a boil. Once it boils, lower the heat to a simmer and let it cook for about five to seven minutes (again, be patient you are letting the flavors blend).
6. While the sauce simmers, cook the spaghetti in the boiling water until the pasta is a little firm and not mushy. Don’t believe the time on the box cook it for about a minute or two less.
7. Drain the pasta and add it to the sauce. Toss the pasta to coat.
8. Divide the pasta and serve immediately, with some freshly grated parmesan or pecorino cheese.

What happened to high school Prom?

It used to just be a dance in a high school gym decorated by the pep club; a night that never lived up to the hype generated by Hollywood movies like Pretty in Pink, Ten Things I Hate About You, Valley Girl, etc. – typical tales of star-crossed lovers and romantic reunions. Now prom has reached a frenzy once reserved only for weddings—but without the gift registry…at least for now.

Today’s prom involves party buses with TV screens and dancing poles that take the students to urban hotels for catered dinners followed by club-hopping after the dance.

Seriously.

If your child, like mine, is smack dab in the middle of Prama Season I feel for you, but if your kid isn’t quite there yet, you may be able to help stop the madness.

Here is my list of the Five Ridiculous New Prom Traditions. Feel free to add to it. I’m sure there are things I don’t even know about yet.

1. Let’s start with the point where the craziness begins: the “Prom-posal.” Yes, that’s an actual thing. In fact, March 11 is National Promposal Day .

I kid you not. (It’s also National Worship of Tools Day so there’s that)

I know boys who have choreographed flash mobs, girls who have asked someone via the Jumbotron at the Chicago Bulls game and someone who used the loudspeaker at school to sing a request to his date. There are even companies that will help with the planning.

What’s wrong with just asking, “Do you want to go to Prom with me?”

Would someone really say no to a potential date who asked by himself instead of singing it, posting it, splashing it across a screen or having a celebrity ask for him? If the answer is yes, then what happens down the road when a marriage proposal comes your way? Are you going to be disappointed when it’s just a simple, “will you marry me,” and not a sunrise ask on a mountain top with Ed Sheeran singing quietly in the background while being streamed via Facebook Live??

2. Then there’s the cost. WTF? You could feed a small country with the money that is being spent on this dance. My kid will be shelling out a lot of money (his own – let’s be clear) for dance tickets, a tux rental, a corsage, and a limo. On the plus side, at least he isn’t getting a spray tan, a manicure, a pedicure and an updo – as far as I know.

3. The extras. The pictures! The limo! The after party! The pictures should be taken in a spot with an appropriately breathtaking backdrop. The limo, excuse me, party bus needs to have flashing lights, music, videos and room to dance for the hour-long drive to and from the party venue. The after party, well, that needs it’s own paragraph. See #5 below.

4. The actual dance (or, as the kids call it, the worst part of the night). My mom was reminiscing about decorating the gym and serving punch and cookies at her prom ala Grease.

Sigh.

That’s never going to happen again but do they really need to drive 45 minutes to a hotel in the city for the dance? I guarantee there is somewhere in the ‘burbs that could accommodate the party without forcing a trek into the city. (But the party bus is one of the best parts, Mom!) Why can’t they just take a page out of the original Footloose and host the dance in a barn across the county line! (Wow! There really are a lot of prom moments in movies and, wow, I’m really showing my age.)

5. And, finally, there is the after-party. Yes, there is an after-party in addition to the picture pre-party, the party itself and, often, the day after party. The after party used to be just hanging out at someone’s house but now there are all-ages dance clubs, comedy clubs and boat parties with DJs to continue the fun. In Manhattan there’s even a company that caters to the after-prom party set.

All of this for ONE NIGHT people!!

It’s a slippery slope.

You’ve been warned.

Where do you draw the line? Can you if you aren’t footing the bill?

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