Posts Tagged ‘boys’

1 Nov

Nightmare on Oak Street

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

Halloween is full of frightening possibilities: haunted houses, slasher movies, costumes dripping with fake blood. But, nothing is as scary as dealing with the college applications process.

It’s enough to give you nightmares. Literally.

Last week I dreamt that the University of Wisconsin at Madison denied my application for admission.

Denied! Not even wait listed?!

No matter how much I pleaded with the admissions officers they wouldn’t budge. It didn’t matter that I already had an undergrad degree—and a law degree!

“We are a very selective school,” the admissions officer reminded me. “You will have to do better.”

(FYI: I didn’t go to the University of Wisconsin, I didn’t apply to the University of Wisconsin, my son has not applied to the school nor does he want to go there so I’m not even sure why I’m dreaming about that school.)

As if that wasn’t bad enough, last night I had a dream that I was admitted to some nameless/faceless school but once I got there I couldn’t leave.

No matter what mode of transportation I chose, I couldn’t get off that campus: I fell down when I was running away, the car wouldn’t turn on, the elevator wasn’t working, the taxi I got in kept bringing me back to the dorm. You name it, it happened to me. I was in my very own clichéd horror movie.

It would have been funny if it weren’t so scary.

So, why am I having these nightmares? I’m not the one with the looming deadlines and the multiple essays yet to be written. I’m not the one still weighing a decision to apply to a school with a November 1 deadline at 8:00 PM on October 31!!

I’m having nightmares because somehow, we parents have been roped into this process, a process that our parents weren’t even privy to. My parents didn’t even realize that I had sent in my college applications until they were in the mail. They didn’t read my essays or proof my application to check for stupid mistakes – that was all on me.

To top it off we parents now get constant updates from the college counselor’s office letting us know how much our kids need to get done and when. When I was in high school my mom and I had one meeting with my college counselor and that was the last my mom heard from him. No such luck here.

I understand that the college admissions process is ridiculously stressful for the students. Kids don’t apply to a handful of schools anymore; they apply to 10, or 12 or 15. And each application requires an essay (or three), and it really is a VERY BIG DECISION. The kids are stressed and this stress is spilling into other areas of our children’s lives, namely the dreams of their parents.

I can’t wait for him to get through this process and pick his school. Then I can have dreams about him being away from home and nightmares about how I won’t be able to reach him…

 

Happy Halloween

 

11 Oct

Size Doesn’t Matter

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

My younger son’s soccer team won a tournament this weekend and someone sent me a congratulatory email that read: “It shows that size really isn’t as important as determination and hard work…”

I didn’t get it. Why does size matter?

Yes, my son is vertically challenged. He is the by-product of a 5’2” mom and a 5’8” dad so that’s not too much of a surprise, but he wasn’t trying out for the NBA or even shooting for Olympic Gold in the high jump. Now that would be a feat for someone on the less tall side. Then, I suppose, height would be a relevant talking point.

But soccer? Lionel Messi of FC Barcelona is considered one of the greatest soccer players of all time and he’s only 5’7”. (His teammates, Andres Iniesta and Xavi are only 5’6”!) Messi is skilled, fast, and determined because he wants to win not because he’s shorter than the average European soccer player.

My youngest has always been determined. “Me do it!” was his mantra even when he was two-years-old and didn’t realize that he was only in the 5th percentile for height. He was simply born with that “can do” attitude.

It’s funny though, how some people—usually the freakishly large—view short stature as a negative, something that needs to be overcome. Sure, there are studies that show that people who are shorter than average are paid less than their taller counterparts, but women and African-Americans are also paid less than their counterparts. Those statistics are far more telling of who is in charge of the money than they are of anything of importance about someone short or African-American or female.

To me—all five-foot-two-inches of me—being short doesn’t mean you have a Napoleon complex.  It just means you’re short.

But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe being teased about his height has helped my son become a little feistier. My sassy center may have been shaped by way too many short jokes (although I think it had more to do with being the youngest in the family and being picked on by my older brother).

Perhaps my younger son’s spirited side is due to my constant yelling and screaming…at his older brother. My oldest doesn’t respond to my shrieking but motivating my youngest may be a happy by-product! (I’m shameless when it comes to justifying my bad behavior).

I, of course, would rather attribute my younger son’s drive to a higher purpose: a fight for those who have been wronged. I’ve noticed that he gets most fired up in a soccer match when a teammate gets a raw deal, a ref makes a bad call or when an opposing player pushes him around. During his last game, he became more aggressive after two opposing players drove him into the ground. (Both players were his height, in case you were thinking that he was trying to prove a point.)

To get to the bottom of this I decided to simply ask my son if his height makes him work harder at soccer. (We try to avoid talking about his height because we don’t want him to think that we think he’s short).

“Of course!” he responded, without hesitation.

That just goes to show you…

I know nothing about my children.

30 Jun

What Were They Thinking?

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

As my youngest son and I were driving to the doctor’s office in our local hospital we began reminiscing about the time that I was racing to catch up to the ambulance carrying him to the same hospital after he hit his forehead at a local swimming pool (see #1 below). This got me thinking about some of the other, perhaps not as urgent, moments in my two boys’ young lives that resulted in injuries. I laughed a little as I looked back at these moments because these particular injuries were really just so ridiculous. I can’t imagine any girls being injured in the same ways (Maybe I’m wrong. Please tell me if I am).

Of course, I blamed myself for every one of these injuries (“If only I had been there when he decided to sled down an icy stairway!” “If only I had taught them that metal chairs hurt when you land on them from a high vertical jump!”) But, I realized after reviewing this list, that all of the lessons that they’ve learned and all the nagging that I’ve done wouldn’t have prevented any of these injuries because boys do mind-boggling things. I was simply “letting” my boys be boys.

So, here is my top ten list of stupid things that my kids have done and the resultant injury. And, just so you know, I was only present for two of them—#2 and #3—and I couldn’t have stopped either one of them if I tried:

#1 – Running into a pole in the middle of the kiddie pool. (result: 5 stitches. Also, the club has now banned anyone over the age of 5 from the kiddie pool);

#2 – Running in the house while looking behind him and turning just in time to meet the corner of the door jamb (broken nose);

#3 – Jumping up for no apparent reason and landing chin first on the back of a metal kitchen chair (3 stitches);

#4 – Sledding down the neighbor’s ice-covered front stairs. The sled continued on but his head stayed behind and hit the concrete stairs (CT scan, no concussion);

#5 – Playing soccer in the street—barefoot—and kicking at a ball that was right along the curb (broken toe, lost toe nail);

#6 – Playing soccer in the 3 1/2 foot wide upstairs hallway—barefoot—and kicking at the door jamb instead of the ball (broken toe);

#7 – Getting shot point-blank in the ear with a high-powered water gun during a water gun fight (punctured eardrum);

#8 – Lying across the top of a large ride-on truck and pushing himself straight into the dog’s elevated metal water bowl (broken nose);

#9 – Getting shot in the neck while playing paint ball without a neck guard  (a lot of bleeding and a big scar, physically and probably emotionally as well);

And, my personal favorite:

#10 – Shooting himself in the leg with an air-soft gun to prove that air-soft guns don’t hurt (they really do and, they leave a mark).

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