Lemonade

For two days running, my daughter has practically tripped off the bus rushing to ask, "Did you buy lemonade at the store?". I notice my eyes begin to roll without official permission. I can't believe it. She can't remember how to subtract three from twelve, but she cannot forget that her mother hasn't bought lemonade yet and outside temperatures are soaring past fifty. How does a parent ever deal with disappointment of this magnitude? There's whining. And did I already mention there's whining? I remind her that nine year-olds are supposed to be over the whole whining thing. She flashes a fake grin, apologizes, then asks if she can make strawberry smoothies. "NO", I say. "And what about the cupcake mix, can you make cupcakes today?" "No". "Can you make them tonight?" Do I really have to say no again? Well of course I do, because if I don't answer her, this could go on FOREVER. I try to stay calm, refocus her or me or both of us. Impossible.

Taking a Break

Lately my husband has been away more than usual. And while I don't mind it (I'm not a saint, just used to it), I'm programmed to think that I need a break once he's back. Today I had just such an opportunity. I grabbed the car keys and was gone before the kids could ask "wh...? Once I'm out, I almost never do anything fun, frivolous or irresponsible. I usually tackle to-dos. Today I did a favor for my dad, returned some purchases, bought a hand-mixer to replace a broken one, and shopped for all-season tires. My break lasted about three hours including travel time. But when I got back to the house, the chaos that hit me at the door was so much more than I could handle. It never fails, my kids sense my disorientation and regularly assault me on all fronts. I felt like a scuba diver who surfaced without taking time to make decompression stops. I nearly had the bends. I tried to get my game-face on, hoisting the chicken from the fridge. Over the next two hours, I struggled to get my chicken ready to roast, practiced math with the oldest, read a pile of books to the youngest, and fawned over my middle child's latest Lego creations. The idea of a break works better if it actually feels like one. Racing against time to get errands done just isn't relaxing, no matter what's playing on the radio. Next time, I need to stay put. On the rare occasion when I've announced that I'm going out to garden, or heading to my paper piles to sort and file, I've fared far better. I get a break and I accomplish something that alleviates more stress than errands. And, I'm not too far out of the mainstream to suffer the throngs of re-entry once I'm finished.

Bonding with my Baby

Tonight I was fortunate to have a friend host two out of three of my young children for a sleepover. I was left to cuddle with my sweet five year old - my baby. Everyone with children (or a pet) has one. It's the last one and we all know it. My sweet baby flew from my womb like a rocket thanks to a three-times-a-charm mantra. But there really is a special bond with that baby. For me, it didn't crop up immediately as significant - different from the others (I feel suddenly transplanted to a Lost episode). Anyway, tonight my baby and I heaped ourselves in blankets and bathed in the black and white reality of "I Love Lucy" episodes for an hour. We shared pretzels and Kix cereal. When she noticed me falling back on a bad habit (mine is picking at hangnails - how glamorous), she cooed, "don't pick, don't pick". And when I didn't listen, she rang out again with the same sage advice. I whispered back to the sage, whose wisdom I read with respect, "I know". What I notice about the baby isn't that the child is more special than the other children in the family, but rather the parent has a greater appreciation for time with her children in general because it is the best measure of finite and fleeting available. Given the chance, any among my children would fill the same role, notice the same insights. But rushed through chores, homework, activities, friends, and scripted inquiries of their day, there are days when neither parent nor child has time leftover to relish much of anything.

Fiscal Responsibility

I just sat with a complete stranger while be doled out an impressive case against my ability to provide for my children. I was asked questions such as, "have you and your husband formulated a plan to finance the college educations of three children graduating within five years of each other?" Uh, nope, not even close. So here I am, musing over homework habits, over-scheduled children, and whole grain snacks via my blog only to learn that the small stuff may not be enough. I tried to sound responsible, thinking hard about his latest question. What if my kids do really well and want to go to MIT? For the first time, I allowed the frightening reality behind the financial planner's questions to take hold. Can college tuition costs continue to escalate unchecked? Will community colleges become the new state schools? Can kids grab some credits online for huge savings? At forty, I feel like an infant - clinging to life's basics because they are all I know. But what if I fail my children because I'm too scared to plan for them, or too scared to fill my financial holes. We may end up relying on loans, refinancing the house, or applying the best bang-for-your-buck criteria when choosing schools for our kids. But when the time comes, we need to have actually thought about all this stuff.

Kids and their Stages

It can be all too easy to think of your children in a certain fixed way. The way they rush through the slalom course between this stage and that one. The youngest of my brood is currently finding her inner-student, begging for homework. My middle son flashes to anger when scolded, then storms into mutiny and eventual unchecked sobbing. The oldest is smart and sassy, and dare I say, intellectual in a way her parents are not. She practices fresh and snappy retorts to her parental overlords, but quickly backs down in response to her mother's less encouraging expressions. Each phase, stage, call it what you will, is du jour, with no promise for tomorrow. It reminds me that parents have to adapt like persevering guppies in old water. The hard part is that sometimes we, as parents, forget to move on to the next stage. Maybe we were at last comfortable with the preceding stage. Or maybe we don't even notice that yet another transition has been initiated. Whatever it is, our job remains like that of a vigilant oracle, ready to anticipate the next new thing.

Greed

I just took four kids to the seasonal ice cream stand in town for a random treat. By explaining that I only had eight dollars and wanted to leave the ATM out of the equation, I hoped to squash rampant requests for upgrades such as milkshakes and cherry dip. Despite my empty pockets and full disclosure, I shook my head to deflect their greedy demands. Borrowing a sentiment from my seven year old, I thought "what the heck?" Number one, it's a sweet treat. Number two, it's free and undeserved. Why is it that entitlement is always in the room (or the parking lot)? Crushed by their bad attitudes, I sat in the car with my slightly under-the-weather five year old to eat my kiddie cone on a perfectly sunny day. I needed a time-out. On the way home, I eavesdropped as the three older kids, smashed together in the back of the minivan, spouted on about the delicious ice cream. Apparently, and I quote, "it was the best ice cream ever".

Boredom

Are you bored? Based on the number of times my kids claim boredom, I'd guess it was their primary objective. Yet how can the three of them be bored? At 5, 7 and 9, they are perfectly juxtaposed to laugh at poop jokes on cue. Teasing and unsolicited torturing provides hours of entertainment, as does climbing on off-limit furniture, and sliding down staircases in sleeping bags. There are at least a couple thousand dollars stowed away in IKEA bins, disguised like Legos, Barbies, Polly Pockets, Littlest Pet Shop, and Playmobil. Then there are the basics like old fashioned wooden blocks, dollhouse, puzzles, books, boardgames, arts and craft supplies, an over-flowing dress-up bin, a family of Potato Heads and baby dolls with all the fixin's. The yard offers a playset, bikes and scooters, wooded acres and climbing trees. Heck, we even have a lovable Labrador called Rudy. When my oldest daughter describes herself as bored, she either wants to bake cookies or use the computer. The only thing I can figure is that the word boredom, say it isn't so, has been mislabeled. Boredom is really code for "forget all that other crap, all I want to do is... "

Switching Gears

As a parent, I feel more like a stick shift than anything else. I move from one mode to another with just a twitch of my emotional gears. One minute, my youngest is screaming that the dog wants to come inside. The next, because I'm actually upstairs finally brushing my teeth at eleven, or maybe I'm taking a shower at three just before racing to the bus-stop, I roll my eyes, rushing to her side to quell the nagging. When I see her, I get into her face, grab her by the arms and with an equally charged response, I mock her saying something like "get off my back you battle-axe". She lights up and explodes with laughter like you've never seen. We hug and laugh, and then I let the dog inside. I love switching gears - what a roller-coaster it is.

Dad's Home

What is this phenomenon where one parent can fly solo while the other is away? You tap into auto-pilot mode with relative ease. To survive, you might dumb the whole routine down a notch or two (or five), depending on how many kids you have. You serve breakfast for dinner one night, nachos another, and take them out to a restaurant. The house may be more unkempt than usual, and the bathtub might be dry as a bone. You lie to yourself about how easy it is, and how you could do this indefinitely. But the minute that spouse returns, your system undergoes a series of shut-downs only akin to a security breach at the White House. You may still be there in body, but you cannot be reached. As you eke out a break to regroup (and maybe use the potty sans kids in the bathroom), you tell yourself that it wasn't half bad. In fact, it was pretty easy and if you had to, you could do it all over again tomorrow. The truth is, it can seem easier to parent solo because you are acting on behalf of only one person (yourself), instead of two.

What makes parenting so extra-challenging is that you NEVER do it in a vacuum. Instead, parenting almost always takes place in front of a huge mirror. Of course, even the most renegade among us check our own reflection occasionally. But when we parent with a partner (that huge mirror I just referred to), everything we do is a little harder because we aren't just trying to please ourselves. We have the dreams and goals of another parent to respect. And those dreams and goals are what our partners want for their children. The only way to win here is to respect, share, listen, repeat (and don't forget to breathe).

Shopping

How many times have you, as a parent, said "I will never ... again!" Well, today I attempted to shop for shoes for the three of them, and was rewarded with such beastly behavior that I wanted to morph into a cyclone right in the middle of the shoe department. My son was such a spaz that I had no idea how to handle myself, let alone him. It presented one of those moments where you just search around, desperate, finally admitting you've got nothing. Thirty years ago I could have hauled off and hit him for everyone to see. Well, apparently I wasn't born early enough. All I could do was grab his hand, while simultaneously over-enunciating a side-bar lecture into his ear, and march him towards the exit hoping to keep him from escalating the trouble he had already started with his youngest sister. The truth is, I probably will do it again. Sometimes you have to take your children to a store. You either find the strength to quietly persevere or impose a strategy to subdue their awful behavior that actually works.

Filling Time

When I was a kid (and I was born in 1968), I took a baton twirling class, one parks & rec dance class, and then nothing til high school when a friend urged me to go out for field hockey - what a different world my children inhabit. My kids, believe it or not halted by an activity-minimalist mom, have tried gymnastics, t-ball, basketball, soccer, dance, karate, theater and swimming. Holy cow. What next? I spent hours in the woods with my friends and a collective imagination. If we choose the things that fill our kids' lives, we must choose carefully. And if we choose too much, we could rob them of the basic things they might choose for themselves given the opportunity. Time, open space and the freedom to create need to be on their menu everyday.

Candy

Neither one of my three children can go to the neighborhood pharmacy without the unrelenting expectation of a candy reward. I can easily recall how this all started and admit my seems-like-yesterday compliciteness. When they were very young, I would get through long-haul errands such as trips to the grocery store, Target and the like, by first grabbing and then ripping open a huge bundle of Twizzlers. As they suckled the strawberry goodness, I told myself it was survival. Now look at us. My kids expect sweets whenever and wherever they want them. My youngest whines and chants for more. Today I gave her a box of mints for no reason, and 3 hours later she had squirreled away all but the last few. When I told her that was enough, she FREAKED out. Surprise! Oh, the damage I reap. Yet I only have myself to blame. Admitting guilt is easy, but breaking the pattern and ensuing damage that I began feels impossible.

Modern Parents We Salute You

Welcome to my very first blog post. My mind's passion is all about raising kids today. Not that kids, themselves, are innately rotten, but we as parents are charting new waters when it comes to raising them. Oh, you can say that everything is cyclical and that today's techno kids are no different than any other generation, but that isn't what this blog is about. My blog is about a generation of parents raising kids, for the very first time, without a cut-and-dry method. For thousands of years, children have been raised as ancillary components of the family unit - integral to the survival of the family - running the farm, sewing the clothes, etc. Modern days have presented parents with a shift. In many families, children are no longer necessary to support the homestead, instead children are born into a role of accessory. People have the luxury of having children just for the fun of it. Imagine that, having kids for the fun of it. In the meantime, starting in the 20th century, parents were stripped of their ability to raise their children with fear and respect as core motivators. Legions of parents were admonished and in some cases shunned, thanks to modern parenting dogma, for employing corporal punishment as a discipline technique. American parents universally began to feel spied upon, and rightly so as neighborhood do-gooders would call the police if they saw a child spanked in public. Now the question remains, and believe me, we're all still trying to figure it out, how do you raise successful, respectful and good children without applying the same discipline tools and techniques used by thousands of years of parents before us? And what are the consequences of raising kids without such a time-honored technique to show us the way? What will our children be like as adults, and how will they parent? Will they be as conflicted as their parents, struggling against manic extremes to keep up outward signs of normalcy. Parenting as we know it is a new frontier, folks, and we are basically fumbling with a clean slate. The first person to figure it out gets an honorable mention.