Posts Tagged ‘kids’

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.

 

 

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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