Posts Tagged ‘parenting’

6 Nov

Parenting Disconnect

Posted by I suck as a parent in boys, children, family, kids, parenting, payphones, reading a map, teaching. Tagged: , , , , , , , , .

Of all the things that I thought I would need to teach my children, using a payphone never broke the top 500.

Why would I need to teach them to use a payphone? Doesn’t the phone have instructions written on it? Who doesn’t know how to use a payphone?

But then I read an article in the Wall Street Journal about how New Yorkers needed pay phones due to the spotty cell phone service and lack of power in the wake of Hurricane Sandy’s recent devastation. Apparently, many 20-somethings had never used a payphone before and they weren’t sure what to do.

I was appalled at first but the more I thought about it the more I realized that I have not needed to use a payphone in over 20 years so why would someone 20 years my junior need to?

And, more importantly, why would my kids need to use one?

In the time it would take my kids to find a working pay phone they could ask someone to use a cell phone unless, like the people in New York and New Jersey, there was no cell service or no electricity to charge their phones.  I know that my kids would figure it out but it made me realize that what I needed to explain was the finer points of making a collect call (because, really, who has change for a call anyway?).  I don’t think my kids have ever needed to call an operator or even know what an operator does.

To test my theory, I just asked my 12-year-old how to call the operator:

Me: “If you needed to call the phone operator what would you do?”

My Kid: “Why would I need to call the operator?”

Me:  “Humor me. What would you do?”

Kid: “I guess I would push ‘O’. But why?”

Me:  “What if you didn’t have any money but you needed to make a phone call?”

Kid: “Why would I need money to make a phone call?”

Me: “What if you didn’t have a charged cell phone?”

Kid: “I would ask someone if I could borrow theirs.”

Me: “What if you weren’t with anyone and you needed to use a payphone?”

Kid: “Where would I find a payphone? Couldn’t I just find a store that is open and ask them to use the phone? I’m a kid, they would let me.”

At least I know he’s thinking.

All of this made me wonder about all of the other things that I never thought that I would need to teach my kids. I don’t mean programming the VHS recorder or slicing a mango with just a knife,

I’m talking about skills that I never thought my kids would need given our technological advancements but maybe I should teach them anyway. Here are just a few:

  1. How to read a map. My kids think that GPS is all you need but there have been plenty of times when the very pleasant voice on my phone is telling me to turn left but doing so would land me in someone’s front yard. Besides, as we all know, cell service is not a given.
  2. How to use an encyclopedia (and do research) that is not on-line. I know this is something they should learn at school but I swear I haven’t seen my kids go to the library to do research since 2nd grade. Besides, I love encyclopedias. I used to read them for fun (seriously). Using a microfiche machine would also fall into this category.
  3. How to use a phone book. My kids probably don’t know where they are or why they would use one when they have access to computers, smart phones and tablets. But what if they are stuck at a diner/gas station/truck stop in the middle of nowhere and they need to use a payphone to call for a hotel room/ tow truck/food delivery? Yes, they can read so, yes, they could figure it out but forcing them to look up a number in the phone book might not be such a bad thing.
  4. How to use a fax machine. My 12-year-old and I were watching the movie, Air Force One, and one of the characters used a fax machine to send a message to the White House because the fax machine was on a separate line from the phones. My son asked whether anyone uses a fax machine anymore. My mother and father-in-law still have one but we don’t.  I just scan, .pdf and email. I have, however, needed to fax something so maybe the kids should know how…just in case they find themselves without the ability to scan, .pdf and email.
  5. How to start a fire without matches, a gas-powered cook top or a lighter. No power. No gas. Freezing temperatures. Enough said.
  6. How to sit at dinner without pulling out your smart phone. Ok, this one is not an actual skill (or maybe it is) but it is a necessity. I was at brunch with my kids the other day and neither one of them could sit still and have a conversation without texting or having a screen in front of them. Granted, the adults eventually pulled out their phones but I’m sure the adults could engage in conversation even if they didn’t have an app to fall back on (at least I hope we could).

What would be on your list of skills that you thought you would never have to teach your kids?

 

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21 Oct

Strike Back

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

Have you heard about the mom who went on strike? For six days, Jessica Stilwell, mother of three girls, refused to pick-up, clean up, or otherwise wash anything for her daughters in the hope that they would simply do it themselves. Sure, they eventually broke down and cleaned the mess but only after six days of forcing their family to live in squalor. Who wants to live through that??

I’ve often dreamed of going on strike except in my dream I run away.

I run away to a beautiful tropical island where I don’t have to look at six days worth of dishes in the sink or clothes on the couch. If I’m going to teach my kids a lesson I might as well do it in comfort.

But, alas, fleeing to a tropical locale is not always a realistic option. That’s why I’ve come up with a new solution: throw out your back!

 

No plane ticket required; just a lack of mobility and a hefty doctor’s bill (unless you’ve met your insurance deductible for the year, then your golden).

Sure it’s painful; but it has an upside: even if you want to clean up, you can’t. Ms. Stilwell had to fight her natural impulses to scrub, organize and scream. I get to escape to my room and lay on the floor, no questions asked.

I really can’t push a vacuum cleaner or empty a dishwasher and, although, I suppose I could assemble a meal (or at least pick up the phone to order one) why would I do that?

I don’t want to give them hope.

Which reminds me; don’t let them see you doing ANY housework. Don’t wipe down the counters, or let the dog out or even fluff a pillow. They are looking for signs that you are improving. If you can put away the cereal box, then obviously, you are well enough to do the laundry. Don’t give them hope (this, by the way, applies to your spouse as well).

If you opt for this plan, however, make sure at least one of your children sees you writhing in pain. There is no substitute for this. If they only see you limping around or moving slowly, they may know you are in pain, but it may not be enough pain to prevent you from making them lunch.

Unfortunately, only my youngest saw me injure myself while taking off my boots. (Yes, taking off my boots did me in, and, no, I’m not 80-years-old). My subsequent screams were enough to reduce my 12-year-old to tears. Now, if he sees me lean forward to get something or I simply ask him to do something he jumps to my aid.

My oldest, on the other hand, missed the show. He came home after I was already tucked in bed at 8:30 at night. Although that did seem disturbing to him, it clearly wasn’t enough for him to really understand the extent of my pain. The following day I actually had to text him from my prone position on the family room floor to get him to let our barking dog in.

He was sitting 15 feet away.

Yelling for him didn’t work because he had his ear buds in and the music was so loud that even I could hear it. Now, normally, if I need him to do something and his ear buds are in I have two options:  walk up to him and yank an ear bud out or—as is more often the case—I simply do whatever it is myself. This time, however, I didn’t have much of a choice. So I sent him a text.

I saw him lean around the corner to see why I was texting him from 15 feet away. I looked him in the eye as I reached for my back and moaned. Unfair, I know, but, come on! I’m on the floor!

He only bitched for a little of the 20 foot walk to the door.

At that moment I actually considered recreating my back spasm so he, too, could witness the extent of my injury. One pull on my cowboy boots or a quick twist to the right and bam! Maybe that would be enough to make him stop complaining. But, no, even I’m not that much of a masochist.

Or aren’t I…

Did I just hear my youngest mutter that he doesn’t have any clean clothes to wear? Where are my boots?

3 Oct

Decisions, Decisions

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

I need your opinion.

Am I a bad mom if I let my son go to a party? A party where it was likely that some kids would be drinking alcohol and that I could only guess would eventually be broken up by the police because high school parties haven’t changed much since I was in high school? Have I set a dangerous precedent where I can no longer revoke his party going privileges??

My 16-year-old (who is a junior in high school) asked if he could drive to a party this past weekend. He told me who was having the party and somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered hearing something about this kid and his parties.

I asked my son if the kid’s parents were going to be home. He didn’t know.

I asked my son if there would be alcohol. He didn’t know.

I chose to believe that he really didn’t know and I let him go.

Thankfully the police were already lining the streets when he pulled up to the party so he didn’t have to formulate an exit plan while he was there.

A friend of mine said that having the police at the party before he got there was a good lesson because next time my son will think, “All parties are eventually broken up by the police.”

I’m worried that my son and his friends were thinking, “Next time we need to get to the party before the cops come.”

My son has been to “parties” before; parties where they serve Arnold Palmers and pizza. If only every party he will attend would be this innocent. But they usually aren’t.

I’ve had several parents tell me that they heard about “the party” and in the same breath tell me that their kids would never go to a party like that. Too bad these are the same kids who were texting my son from the party (he showed me the texts).

See, I let my son go because he told me he was going. He could have lied and told me that he was going to a friend’s house and gone to the party anyway (like most of the kids). But he didn’t. He told me the address of the party, he told me the friend he was going with and he gave me his friend’s cell phone number.

He also texted us when he got to the party and told us about the cops on the street.

What other junior in high school is going to do that?

Before he left for the party I laid out the rules. Even though I know he doesn’t drink or do drugs, my mantra was the same: No drinking, no drugs, and if the cops show up—leave. (See, he’s the kid who would go talk to the police and try to help…and probably get arrested).

His response: “Mom, please. I’m not going to do anything stupid. I’m 16.”

I’m still laughing about that one.

When he got home he gave me the play-by-play. I heard about the police, the ambulance (???!), the fight in the parking lot of the pizza parlor where he and his friends eventually ended up, the kid with the pot at the party (!). I heard it all – or at least 2/3 (ok maybe 50%). But still, he was talking.

That’s not to say that I believe that he will always tell me everything or he will never get in trouble or he will never do anything stupid. (Please, he is stupid – he’s 16).

But for now, I think that I can trust him so I give him a bit of a longer leash – until I think I have to pull back.

Before he went up to his room, I hugged him – he’s so naïve that he actually thought I was only saying goodnight and didn’t notice me sniffing him like a police dog. I may trust him but I’m not stupid.

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27 Aug

Freaky Friday

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

This is a five-minute segment of texts from this past Friday night:

9:25:What time am I picking you up?

9:27:??

9:28:Why aren’t you picking up your phone????

9:30:Where are you?

Couple those texts with three missed calls during the same five-minute period and it seems like a typical Friday night exchange between parent and teen. Only these texts and calls were from my 16-year-old to me.

So uncool.

Let me rewind a couple of hours.

I went to a party at a friend’s house Friday night and I mentioned to my son that he might need to pick me up. I didn’t want to drive to the party because I wanted to be able to have a glass of wine with dinner and my husband was out of town. With no designated driver my options were limited to bumming a ride home with someone who would probably be drinking (not a good idea), calling a cab (which seemed silly for a two mile drive) or walking the two miles home which would normally be fine only my friend’s house is in an area that is on a stretch of winding road with no sidewalk.  It’s scary enough to drive there at night let alone walk that area.

That’s when I had my epiphany: my 16-year-old could pick me up. What good is having a built-in designated driver if you can’t take advantage of him?

I knew that he wasn’t doing anything terribly exciting that he couldn’t tear himself away from for 15 minutes so why not. Right?

Fast forward a few hours…

I had been at the party for a couple of hours when I finally heard my cell phone ringing.

 

“Where have you been?” he yelled into the phone when I finally answered.

  Shit. I’m going to be grounded.

I swear that was my first thought. That’s how much he sounded like my mother.

“I thought you wanted me to pick you up,” he continued in the same raised voice.

At no point did I want to snap at him and tell him that I was the parent and he couldn’t tell me what to    do. Instead I was thinking, Whoa, dude, chill. I’m at a party and you are ruining my fun.

I had to  suppress a laugh.

“Come get me in a half hour,” I finally responded. I hadn’t planned to stay at the party very long anyway and I figured it was the least that I could do since my oldest had let his little brother tag along to his friend’s house.

37 minutes later.

I felt my phone vibrating and I saw this:

10:04 – “Mom, please come up. I can’t be parked where I am.”

10:05 – “?”

10:06 – “Are you coming up??”

10:07 – “We’re coming down to get you.”

Whaddya mean you’re coming down to get me??

I turned just in time to see my youngest son coming down the stairs to the party.

I was a bit mortified. People were looking. How embarrassing!!

I shooed him away, said my goodbyes and reluctantly marched up the stairs to the waiting car.  My son was now rolling down the passenger window and glaring at me.

“I’ve been waiting for 15 minutes,” he said as I climbed into the car. “And he,” jerking his thumb at my youngest in the back seat. “He needs to go to bed. He’s been yawning.”

OMG! My son had morphed into the parent.

There are times when I look at my mom and wonder when she became the child and I became the adult. I didn’t expect my son to step into the role of parent until he was at least 30. And, yet, here he was, lecturing me the whole way home about how he had to wait for me and it was late and his little brother needed to go to bed. I felt myself sinking lower in my seat, suddenly feeling like a teenager who broke curfew.

Which is why I didn’t call him the following afternoon when I needed a ride after my post-pedicure birthday mojito. He can be such a buzz kill.

2 Aug

Controlled Chaos

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

Forget Dr. Spock. Forget Madeline Levine. My new parenting guru is Bob Bowman.

For those of you not following the London 2012 Summer Olympics, Bob Bowman is Michael Phelps’ coach. Bowman has been training the winningest Olympian in history for the past 16 years. And, although I’m sure he has taught Phelps all sorts of useful stuff during that time, my favorite lessons are the ones when he screwed with Phelps.

During an interview on NBC last night Bowman admitted to messing with Phelps to make him “familiar with chaos.”

Familiar with chaos?

Forget the light bulb, a whole freaking chandelier went off in my head!

I’ve spent the past 16 years trying to PREVENT CHAOS from rearing it’s nasty head in my kids’ direction (as if I could anticipate when that would happen) – when all of this time I should have been teaching my kids how to live in the middle of bedlam.

Effing brilliant!

Bowman admitted during the interview that he once cracked Phelps’ goggles by stepping on them, forcing Phelps to swim with goggles filled with water. I’m sure Bowman didn’t realize at the time that this little stunt would come in handy during the Beijing Olympic Games. Broken goggles happen—you never know when—you just have to deal with it.

Bowman’s approach makes so much sense. You can’t become the greatest swimmer – ever – if you crumble at the first crisis. You have to keep on moving even when your goggles are filled with water. Similarly, you can’t become a capable, independent adult if you need to call someone every time your ride is late or your calculator runs out of batteries or your homework is missing. Stuff happens—you never know when—you just have to deal with it.

Bowman also admitted to hiding Phelps’ goggles right before a meet so he would have to swim without them and making the driver pick them up late so Phelps would miss dinner. Was Phelps pissed? Probably. Did he stop swimming? No. Bowman trained Phelps to deal with unexpected situations that very well might creep up on him one day–when it really mattered (did I mention Beijing?).

I thought I was preparing my kids to be launched into the world by teaching them practical, useful skills like doing laundry and tying a tie. But who am I kidding? If my kids were faced with utter chaos they would probably whip out their phones to call me and ask me how to solve the problem.

So, in the interest of preparing my kids for the unexpected, I’ve decided to take a page from Bowman’s training manual and screw with them.

Now, I would never leave them somewhere if I knew they would be in danger. I wouldn’t want the car to run out of gas when they are on the highway, their phones to die when they are in the city, or their debit cards to be depleted just as they are about to board a plane. But I know these things could happen because similar things have happened to me. I just have no intention of orchestrating that.

So I’ll start small. Maybe I won’t pick them up from school or soccer practice or ACT prep class AND (and this is important) I won’t pick up the phone when they call!

What would they do?

I could lock them out of the house!

I could forget to pack lunch!

What if I swiped my 16-year-old’s wallet as he left the house to go out with friends or what if I gave him bad directions to a friend’s house and he couldn’t find his way? How would he handle those situations? Could he handle those situations?

My kids may not be training for the Olympic games but chaos is everywhere and they should know how to deal with it.

If I get to screw with my kids in the process, all the better.

 

Would you mess with your kids? Let me know.

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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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14 Jun

Why Do Parents Have to Be the Grown-Ups?

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

Last weekend a very good friend of my older son’s showed up at my younger son’s championship baseball game – and rooted for the other team!!

Ridiculous, right? Who’s with me?

Granted he knew a kid on the other team but, still, why pick sides?

I know it sounds petty but WTF, this kid is in my house all the time and has been since he was 3 – that’s 13 years of dinners, snacks, sleepovers, movies, museums, you name it.

I didn’t let the behavior go unacknowledged – I just couldn’t. When he said, “Go Knights! (the name of the opposing team), I responded: “No more food for you in my house.” And I really meant it.

My husband thinks I’m ridiculous. I think I’m totally justified.

I want to question this kid about his behavior, let him know that I do not approve, and, more importantly, make him feel like crap about his decision. Apparently, that is not good adult behavior and I’m supposed to act like an adult.

But I don’t wanna! (If you were here you would have seen me stomp my foot).

Over the years, I’ve learned to bite my tongue when it comes to watching my kids’ friends behave badly. It tends to have a negative impact on my kid’s friendships. I once told my son that one of his friends was never allowed back in our house because he was being mean to my son in front of me and I thought that was disrespectful. Needless to say the kid never came back and my son didn’t stay friends with him. Apparently the kid is not a bully anymore but he’s still afraid of me.

I also scared another friend away when I accused him of stealing– which, let’s be clear – he did. But still, he was 6 at the time so maybe it wasn’t the best use of my energy.

I didn’t actually see him take the money but I cross-examined him and watched with relish as he tripped over his lies.

I was getting change from my purse for my son’s friend for the lemonade stand that he and my son were setting up in our front yard. I took out a five-dollar bill, put it on the counter and turned away for a minute (literally a minute and I mean literally, in the literal sense). When I turned back the money was gone and the kid was slowly walking away from the counter. Just then my son came back in the house and I turned to both boys, “Did you take the money off the counter?” I asked, not in an accusing manner more in a ‘Huh. Now where did I put that?’ kinda way.

“What money?” my son asked.

“The money that I just put on the counter?” I said, looking directly at my son’s friend. I pointed to the now barren counter. “It was right there.” I said.

“There wasn’t a five dollar bill on the counter,” the friend said.

Aha! I had him. I knew that I never said “five-dollars”; I just said “money.” But even with his slip up, he still wasn’t coughing up the dough. Short of frisking the kid and calling the cops there wasn’t much more that I could do.

A little while later the friend came back in the house without my son. “Look what I found outside,” he said, holding up a five-dollar bill.

“Really?” I asked innocently. “You just found that?” What I really wanted to scream was, “Seriously? Do I look like an idiot?” Instead, I waited.

“Yea,” he said. “I found it on the side of the house.” He went on to explain how someone must have dropped it when they were buying lemonade and it probably blew over to the side of the house.

I was really appalled at the extent of the lie. But I was on to him and I was moving in for the kill.

I asked him what side of the house he found it on and he pointed to the west side of the house.

“Was it wet?” I asked him.

He looked at me with an expression that seemed both puzzled and just a little bit frightened.

“Was the money wet?” I asked again.

“No,” he said, clearly confused.

“Interesting,” I said. “Because the sprinkler is on, on that side of the house.” I pointed (I’m sure, very dramatically) to the window where the water was spraying against the windows at regular intervals as the sprinkler moved back and forth in the yard.

It was a solid cross-examination. I didn’t go to law school for nothin’, you know.

He never actually confessed but he didn’t hang out here very much after that. Either he knew that I had his number or he thought I was crazy (probably both). Was it worth it? I don’t know. Would I want my kid to hang out with someone who swipes cash from my house? Probably not, but maybe it was just a phase the kid was going through. I’ll never know.

As for the baseball incident, my older son called his friend a traitor and they laughed about it. Very mature behavior.

I, on the other hand, am going to withhold all of the good snacks from that kid from now on. So there!

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…’

5 Apr

Omnipotence is a Bitch

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

I remember when my kids were little and they thought that I was all-powerful. I could make bumped heads feel better with a kiss, I knew the answers to almost every question they asked, and I always knew exactly what could make them laugh.

I was amazing back then.

But now, even though my kids are convinced that I know nothing and they know with the utmost certainty that I have no super powers, I am—seemingly—still responsible for everything…including the weather.

Yesterday morning my 16-year-old snapped at me because it was only going to be 63 degrees – in April! In Chicago! Instead of the unseasonably warm temperatures that we had been having of late it was going to be a normal April day. And that was somehow my fault.

“Mom,” my son yelled from the top of the stairs. “Is it warm today?”

“It’s supposed to be about 60 degrees,” I responded as I walked upstairs.

“What?!” he shrieked. “60 degrees. Why?” he asked, shooting me an accusing stare. “Why?”

I actually felt guilty for a second, as if I really did have something to do with the temperature.

This was on the heels of the “why do you make me go to school at 8:15?” accusation. At the time, part of me wondered if it was, indeed, within my control to set the start time for school.

I had to shake that one off as well.

I let him rant about the injustice of his 16-year-old, suburban life and chalked up his mood swing to a lack of sleep or a hormone imbalance or whatever teenage issue was pushing out any shred of logic or reason in his brain.

I said nothing because I knew that anything I said could and would be used against me on the 8-minute car ride to school.  Besides, I clearly needed more coffee to endure another onslaught.

But he was not done.

“It’s Wednesday,” he grunted just one minute into the car ride.

[pause]

I noticed him turning toward me and I could feel him glaring at me accusingly. Was he really going to blame me for it being Wednesday?

Really?

“Why do I have to go to school on Wednesdays?” he asked, his voice rising in disbelief.

I laughed. Out loud. Actually it was more of a guffaw.

But really, what else is there to do when your kid poses such a ridiculous question?

Even if I said, “You don’t need to go to school on Wednesdays anymore,” he would just respond with, “Well, if I don’t go on Wednesday then Thursday would become Wednesday so then Thursdays would suck.” And so on, and so on, and so on.

He didn’t see the humor in all of this but that didn’t matter. Parenting, for me, is all about perception; that is, how I perceive the situation. A good spin can make anything look better. And boy was I going to spin this one—it was either that or bang my head against the steering wheel.

We finally made it to the school without further incident (well, there was that moment when he got mad at the people walking their dogs on the sidewalk so slowly, but at least he didn’t blame me for that).

As he got out of the car he looked at me and shook his head (because I was still smirking, of course). “You are so moody,” he said. And with that, he was off.

Ah, if only I was all-powerful…

 

 

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.

 

 

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